BLUE CHIP Wall Street stocks retreated at the close of an uneventful session after struggling past some early profit taking. The Dow Jones snapped a string of eight consecutive record closes.

One of the Dow's big gainers was Boeing, which rose following Saturday's announcement that the Pentagon had narrowed the competition for a joint strike fighter contract, cutting out McDonnell Douglas.

Declines outnumbered advances by a narrow margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,175 up, 1,227 down and 904 unchanged. NYSE volume totalled 388.05 million shares, against 526.65 million in the previous session.

The Standard and Poor's 500 stock index fell 0.60 to 737.02, and the NYSE's composite index fell 0.12 to 389.90. Both measures had finished at record highs on Friday. The Nasdaq composite index fell 7.23 to 1,254.57, and the American Stock Exchange's market value index fell 1.23 to 584.18.