NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street was moderately lower in quiet pre-holiday trading Tuesday amid further signs that the housing market and overall economy are still struggling.

The Commerce Department reported third-quarter gross domestic product, a measure of the economy that tallies the value of goods and services, fell at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. That was in line with analysts' expectations and matched the government's estimate of a month ago.

The government also reported that sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, while new home prices dropped by the biggest amount in eight months. New home sales fell by 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 407,000 units, a weaker performance than economists had expected and was the slowest sales pace since January 1991. The median price of a new home sold in November was $220,400, a drop of 11.5 percent from the sales price a year ago.

And the National Association of Realtors said existing home sales fell 8.6 percent to an annual rate of 4.49 million in November from a downwardly revised pace of 4.91 million in October. That was more than analysts expected.

Still, while the readings show further weakness, investors have likely already priced in very low expectations. The concern, however, is that the current quarter will be much worse.

Trading volume was light, and is expected to remain so the rest of this week. Analysts are mindful that light volume tends to skew the market's movements as major indexes spent the morning higher before heading lower by midday.

"Don't read too much into the numbers until the end of the day, we're really in a holding pattern right now," said Ryan Larson, head of equity trading at Voyageur Asset Management. "It is a very quiet news week, and much of it has already been priced into the market."

In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 20.31, or 0.24 percent, to 8,499.46.

Broader indexes were also lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 1.98, or 0.23 percent, to 869.65. The Nasdaq composite index fell 8.56, or 0.56 percent, to 1,523.79. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 7.01, or 1.48 percent, to 468.06.

Declining issues led advancers by 4 to 3 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 500.8 million shares.