NEW YORK - Wall Street stocks ended Monday mixed as traders rapidly digested the victory of pro-euro parties in Greece's election and focused on the next hurdle in Europe's marathon economic crisis.

An earlier rally in Asia and Europe on the back of Greece's election results Sunday had petered out by the time Wall Street got into gear, with the focus already shifting to Spain and its sky-high cost of borrowing.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 25.35 points, or 0.20 per cent, lower at 12,741.82 points.

The S&P 500 rose a modest 1.94 points (0.14 per cent) to 1,344.78. Meanwhile the Nasdaq rose 22.53 points (0.78 per cent) to 2,895.33.

"Greek elections? That's yesterday's news. Today's crisis is a spike in Spanish bond yields," said Dick Green of Briefing.com.

Sunday's elections put Greece's conservative New Democracy party in the lead, with enough seats to form a ruling coalition committed to austerity measures set out in the nation's 130-billion-euro (S$210 billion) EU-IMF bailout.

On the Dow, Hewlett-Packard fell almost three per cent, while Bank of America, Alcoa, JPMorgan Chase and General Electric were all down over one per cent. On the government debt market the rate of return investors demanded to hold 10-year Spanish bonds leapt to 7.061 per cent - the highest level since the birth of the euro in 1999 and a level regarded as unsustainable over the long term - from 6.838 per cent late on Friday.

US borrowing costs eased. The rate on 10-year treasuries fell 0.01 point to 1.58 per cent, while the 30-year fell 0.02 point to 2.68 per cent.