Stocks were down slightly yesterday in another session of lacklustre trading. Investors preferred to wait on the sidelines until next week's Federal Reserve meeting.

The Dow Jones dropped 9.16 to 11,046.48, the Nasdaq Composite was down 10.53 at 3,930.34 and the Standard and Poor's 500 fell 4.37 to 1,491.70.

Trading has been extremely light this week as most companies have issued second-quarter earnings reports and investors are awaiting Tuesday's meeting of Fed policy-makers.

Most traders expect the Fed to leave interest rates alone, believing its six rate increases since last summer have sufficiently slowed the economy and eliminated any inflation risk.

"It was somewhat predictable that we'd have a slowdown in trading prior to the Fed's meeting," said Gregory Nie, senior vice-president for technical research at First Union Securities in Chicago.