Wall Street drifted through a mixed day of trading as rising fashion and cigarette stocks worked against drops for Ford Motor and Qualcomm.

Rising technology stocks sent the Nasdaq composite to a record, but trading was mixed along the rest of Wall Street.

Share are mostly higher in Asia after the S&P 500 neared the 5,000 level for the first time.

That's because Forward Industries, which is worth just $10 million, trades under the ticker symbol "FORD." The iconic Ford Motor has the ticker symbol of "F."This, and other examples of ticker symbol confusion, may cost investors more than $1 million a year in transaction costs, according to two professors who have studied what happens when investors buy the wrong stocks. "That's how long it takes for the stock price to return to normal, probably once investors realize they made a mistake." The 'smart' money often gets confused tooIt's not just small-time mom and pop individual investors who get mixed up. Ticker confusion also can upend sophisticated institutional investors, Nikorov and Balashov found.