(Reuters) -
U.S. stocks were little changed in early trading on Thursday after the S&P
and the Nasdaq touched all-time highs as earnings from some big names
disappointed.
Qualcomm (QCOM.O)
fell 4.4 percent after the chipmaker's forecast missed estimates.
Cigarette
maker Philip Morris (PM.N) was
down 2.8 percent after its quarterly profit came in below expectations.
Home Depot (HD.N) was
off 2.7 percent and weighed on the Dow and the S&P.
Still,
overall earnings continue to beat expectations which, along with a rally in
technology shares, helped all three major indexes to close at a record high on
Wednesday.
Analysts are
estimating an 8.7 percent rise in second-quarter earnings and a 4.6 percent
increase in revenue for the S&P 500 companies from a year earlier,
according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Visa (V.N), eBay
(EBAY.O),
Capital One Financial (COF.N)
are due to report results after the closing bell.
"The
surge in stock prices is showing no signs of letting up as corporate America's
earnings power continue to expand," said Peter Cardillo, chief market
economist at First Standard Financial.
"The
mostly better-than-expected results are lifting investors' confidence - a basic
fundamental positive for equities markets."
The S&P
500 tech sector .SPLRCT, which has been the best performing sector this year,
broke its previous record closing high that had held since March 2000 in the
midst of the dot-com and Y2K tech stocks bubble.
Microsoft (MSFT.O)
will report results after the market close. Other major tech names such as
Alphabet (GOOGL.O),
Facebook (FB.O)
and Amazon (AMZN.O)
are due to report results next week.
At 9:48 a.m.
ET (1348 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was
down 10.05 points, or 0.05 percent, at 21,630.7, the S&P 500 .SPX was
up 0.87 points, or 0.03 percent, at 2,474.70.
The Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC was
down 1.25 points, or 0.02 percent, at 6,383.79.
Seven of the
11 major S&P sectors were higher, with the energy index's .SPNY 0.53
percent rise leading the advancers.
Economic
data showed weekly jobless claims fell to a five-month low. Claims fell to
233,000, below the 245,000 expected by economists polled by Reuters.
American
Express (AXP.N)
fell 1.1 percent after the card company's profit declined 33 percent in the
second quarter.
Abbott
Laboratories (ABT.N)
rose 1.9 percent after the healthcare company raised its full-year profit
forecast.
Property and
casualty insurer Travelers (TRV.N)
was down 2.5 percent after reporting a drop in quarterly profit.
T-Mobile (TMUS.O)
was up 1.1 percent after the wireless carrier's quarterly results topped
analysts' estimates.
Advancing
issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,383 to 1,168. On the Nasdaq,
1,172 issues fell and 1,167 advanced.
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