before closing little changed.

This is basically very simple, and you've complicated it.

As you've noted more than once, McTag, language is coooomplicated stuff.

...and you've complicated it unnecessarily and confused yourself in the process, I should have said.

The market closed high
= the market closed when it was high
=the market, being high, closed

No way Jose is that an adverb.

And here I am doin' the heavy lifting for Punkey.

I already mentioned that a paraphrase can, by changing the position of a word, change its part of speech designation. Do you agree?

It isn't very instructive to offer two new examples, materially changed and then declare that 'that', which refers to only one, is not an adverb.

Yes I agree, but my intention was simplification, not obfuscation, since several of you are having trouble in grasping this.



Not materially changed in meaning, I think. And they are all adjectives.

Going back to the original phrase: "the market closed little changed".

This means, the market was virtually unchanged by the time it closed.
It is a description. "Little changed" is an adjectival phrase.

He finished exhausted
She wound up dead

adjectives

He started hopefully
She slept peacefully

adverbs

In this sentence "close" is a unique stock market term and the word "high" tells HOW the market ended.

But . . . I remember that adjectives can be used as adverbs, but not vice versa