Saturday, January 19, 2013

Wall Street opens mixed on weak earnings

3 hrs.

Stocks indexes are little changed in early trading on Wall Street as the market closes out a strong week in which the Standard & Poor's 500 index hit five-year highs.?

General Electric and Morgan Stanley rose after turning in better earnings report cards. Credit card issuer Capital One Financial fell after its results missed analysts' estimates.?

The Dow Jones industrial average edged up four points to 13,600 shortly after the opening bell Friday.?

The S&P 500 fell two points to 1,478 and the Nasdaq composite fell nine to 3,126.?

Intel dropped 7 percent after reporting that its sales are shrinking as customers shift away from PCs to smartphones and tablet computers. Intel is trying to make chips for more hand-held devices.??

The market?got a lift after Morgan Stanley reported a fourth-quarter profit after a year-earlier loss, helped by higher revenue at the bank's institutional securities business.?

Economic data out of China provided some support to the market, though the focus remained on U.S. corporate earnings. The country's economy grew at a modestly faster-than-expected 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the latest sign the world's second-biggest economy was pulling out of a post-global financial crisis slowdown which saw it grow in 2012 at its weakest pace since 1999.?

Stronger-than-expected U.S. economic data boosted the S&P 500 on Thursday to its highest level in five years. The index is now just 5.6 percent from a record closing peak of 1,565.15.?

It would be a normal reaction for investors to take a pause to lock in recent gains, said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York, but any weakness in the market could also be a buying opportunity.?

"It's the type of market where it's starting to gain momentum and if investors miss the run, they're going to be behind the eight ball early in the year," said Bakhos.?

General Electric reported a better-than-expected rise in earnings on Friday, pushing its shares up 3.8 percent in premarket trading to $22.10.?

Johnson Controls dropped 2.8 percent to $31.07 after its profit fell and the company forecast further declines.?

Overall, S&P 500 company earnings are expected to have risen 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed. Expectations for the quarter have dropped considerably since October, when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.?

Shares of Research In Motion jumped 6.8 percent to $15.92 in premarket trading after Jefferies Group boosted the BlackBerry maker's rating and price target.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/wall-street-opens-mixed-weak-earnings-1B8030755

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