After the market’s biggest jump in two months on Tuesday, few investors expected a back-to-back performance on Wednesday.

That was to be the case, as stocks mostly traded sideways and finished a few points below where they started.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, in fact, eked out a 2-point gain to 12,042, the Nasdaq lost a point to 2750, while the S&P slipped 4 points to 1304.

Away from the major indices, the market showed more of a modest pullback: more than 60% of the trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange was of the declining variety.

The jig was up in financials on Wednesday, which proved such a powerful part of Tuesday’s rally. The SPDR Financial Select Sector (NYSE:XLF) exchange-traded fund was off 0.8% to $16.61, as top holdings JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) all gave back some of Tuesday’s gains.

Automobile stocks continued to tumble — the rout in Ford shares continued, as the stock was down another 3% on Wednesday and has now fallen 18% in four sessions.

Airline stocks, too, suffered — the Amex Airline Index fell to three-and-a-half-month lows on Wednesday, and have steadily descended as oil prices have moved higher.

Small-caps also lost a little momentum — the Russell 2000 index fell 0.3%.

Bonds sold off, with the yield on the 10-year note rising to a 3.49%, its highest closing level since Dec. 15. Commodities were up modestly as a group, with oil and natural gas posting small gains.

With the trading day neither a huge success or failure, the ability of stocks to remain above the recent major-index benchmarks (Dow-12,000 and S&P-1300) will have a lot to do with this week’s rally being preserved or squandered.