While you were sleeping: Wall St eases from records

Tuesday 18th July 2017

Wall Street languished near record highs as investors awaited the latest corporate earnings such as from Netflix.

In 3.28pm trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average eased 0.05 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index inched 0.03 percent lower. In 3.12pm trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.02 percent. Both the Dow and the S&P 500 closed at record highs on Friday.

Other US companies scheduled to report their latest earnings this week include Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Microsoft, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and General Electric.

"After new highs that we saw last week, the market deserves a rest as investors await big earnings this week," Dave Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management, told Reuters.

"Our view is that right now the equity market is a one-legged stool that's driven by earnings and we're pretty optimistic about earnings but if that should falter, the market will falter," Donabedian noted.

The Dow drifted lower as declines in shares of IBM and those of JPMorgan Chase, recently 1.2 percent and 0.8 percent weaker respectively, offset gains in shares of Home Depot and those of Microsoft, recently up 0.9 percent and 0.6 percent respectively.

Shares of Blue Apron sank, down 9.8 percent as of 3.21pm in New York, after reports that Amazon filed a trademark application for prepared food kit services. Shares of Amazon traded 0.6 percent higher in late afternoon in New York.

Shares of Netflix inched higher, up 0.1 percent as of 3.21pm in New York. The company is set to report its latest quarterly earnings after the market closes.

Metals including iron ore, copper and zinc gained after China reported better-than-expected economic growth. The nation’s gross domestic product expanded 6.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, bolstered by gains in industrial output that exceeded estimates.

"It’s a positive signal that China’s economic growth has not only bottomed but momentum is picking up," Margaret Yang, a strategist at CMC Markets in Singapore, told Bloomberg.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the session little changed from the previous close. France’s CAC40 Index slid 0.1 percent, while Germany’s DAX Index fell 0.4 percent.

A Eurostat report showed that the eurozone’s inflation rate slipped, growing at a 1.3 percent pace in June, which was down from 1.4 percent in May and its lowest level this year.

The data bolstered the view that European Central Bank policy makers, which are set to gather on Thursday, are not expected to make any changes.

The UK’s FTSE 100 Index rose 0.4 percent.

(BusinessDesk)

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