Thursday, 23 July 2015 19:10
NEW YORK: US stocks were mixed in opening trade Thursday following a torrent of mostly solid earnings reports from General Motors, United Airlines and others.
Five minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 17,844.33, down 6.71 points (0.04 percent).
The broad-based S&P 500 added 1.76 (0.08 percent) at 2,115.91, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 7.05 (0.15 percent) at 4,630.29.
Strong earnings results pushed up United Continental, parent of United Airlines, by 4.5 percent, and GM, which plowed 6.5 higher after reporting that second-quarter earnings quadrupled to $ 1.1 billion on solid sales in the US and China.
However, heavy equipment maker Caterpillar fell 2.2 percent after profit fell to $ 710 million in the April-June quarter, down 29 percent from a year ago, and the company lowered its 2015 sales forecast.
“The earnings results overall are once again coming in better than analysts’ marked-down expectations in front of the reports,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.
“That doesn’t make the overall results good in a true sense. It just makes them better than feared.”
