North American stock markets retreated Wednesday with investors content to nibble at profits following a strong showing over the last month. There seemed to be little inclination to do much in the way of buying two days ahead of the release of key U.S. employment information while investors took in preliminary jobs data and a healthy reading on the U.S. service sector. Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index fell 131.88 points to 14,020.85 with losses led by energy and financial stocks and support coming only from slight gains in the tech and telecom sectors. The junior TSX Venture Exchange eased 3.63 points to 2,839.77. The Canadian dollar moved down 0.08 of a cent to 100.16 cents (U.S.). On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials moved down 79.26 points to 13,968.05. The Nasdaq composite index was 17.68 points lower to 2,729.43 and the S&P 500 index was off 7.04 points to 1,539.59 after the Institute for Supply Management's index gauge of the health of U.S. non-manufacturing industries registered 54.8 in September, down from 55.8 in August but still showing expansion. The November crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange slipped 11 cents to $79.94 a barrel. Payroll data provided by Automatic Data Processing Inc. indicates that U.S. private payrolls grew by 58,000 in September - in line with expectations - with the construction and financial services areas hard hit by job losses. The negative showing on stock markets comes after indexes rebounded sharply from the lows of August during September with the Dow industrials hitting a record close on Monday. The TSX was still about 500 points from its high. But some say it's time for a pause while investors assess more economic data that would be affected by the credit crisis that blew up in August and third quarter earnings, which are estimated to grow around 5 per cent from a year ago. Canadian Press