Updates with preliminary closing prices

By Sinéad Carew and Ragini Mathur

July 20 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 finished slightly lower on Monday while investors looked for moves toward Middle East de-escalation while they waited for earnings reports due from major technology companies later in the week.

The second-quarter earnings season will pick up the pace this week, with results due from big names like Alphabet GOOGL.O, Tesla TSLA.O and Intel INTC.O, broadening out the picture they provide of the health of corporate America after a week of results mostly from the financial sector.

"Everybody is waiting for earnings season to really get going," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel, and he noted that investors may be "kind of sitting on their hands" ahead of results from sectors such as technology, energy and consumer-facing businesses.

Meanwhile, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Monday that they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, opening a new front in the U.S.-Iran war and widening the threat to global energy supplies and trade beyond the Gulf. But a senior Iranian official told Reuters that mediators have passed Iran a proposal to de-escalate the war with the U.S. that would offer a 10-day ceasefire to find ways to revive an interim deal reached last month.

After more than a week of bombing in the region, Joe Quinlan, head of CIO market strategy for Merrill and BofA Private Bank, said that investors were anxious for any efforts toward a Middle East resolution that could potentially re-open the Strait of Hormuz and improve oil supplies and prices.

"The hope is if you get some type of resolution — less bombing, more talk in the Middle East — that oil prices and gasoline prices would not go as high as we saw earlier this year and therefore, alleviate some of that pressure on consumer prices," Quinlan said, also suggesting that investors were preparing for earnings.

Markets are expecting S&P 500 earnings growth of 26% for the second quarter year on year, up from an earlier estimate of 23.7%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

In particular, investors will monitor results from chipmakers such as Intel and Texas Instruments TXN.O for any encouraging signs after the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index .SOX ended Friday more than 20% below its late-June record high, confirming a bear-market decline.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 13.50 points, or 0.18%, to end at 7,444.19 points, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 9.98 points, or 0.04%, to 25,510.27. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 297.46 points, or 0.57%, to 51,848.96.

In individual stocks, Alphabet rose after a report that its Google unit is developing a Gemini-integrated server chip aimed at improving AI efficiency and easing computing-capacity constraints.

Among other individual movers, Domino's Pizza DPZ.O shares rose after the pizza chain's quarterly revenue edged past Wall Street estimates.