US open: Stocks mixed as traders thumb through earnings
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Thursday 02 Feb 2023
(Sharecast News) - Wall Street stocks were mixed early on Thursday as digested a slew of corporate earnings and some key data points.
As of 1520 GMT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.67% at 33,863.03, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.69% to 4,147.75 and the Nasdaq Composite came out the gate 1.96% firmer at 12,048.06.
The Dow opened 229.93 points lower on Thursday, easily reversing the previous session's small gain.
Corporate earnings were firmly in focus on Thursday, with Eli Lilly posting quarterly revenues that fell short of estimates, Stanley Black & Decker outlining an 11% full-year revenue growth, and Bristol-Myers Squibb reporting earnings and revenue that topped expectations.
Hershey delivered an earnings beat and issued outlook that topped expectations, while Estée Lauder issued a disappointing sales outlook, Merck & Co topped quarterly earnings estimates, Harley-Davidson delivered a strong earnings beat, and Honeywell turned in earnings that topped estimates despite delivering revenues that missed.
Still to come, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, Gilead Sciences, GoPro, and Qualcomm will publish their latest quarterly figures after the close.
Investors also continued to digest news that the US central bank raised the range for its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.5-4.75% and said it foresaw further hikes. In his press briefing following the Federal Open Market Committee's meeting, chairman Jerome Powell explained that with inflation running at multi-decade highs the job was "not yet fully done". At one point during the question and answer session, he also said that it was "very difficult" to manage the risk of doing too little, to then only see inflation spring back a few quarters down the road.
On the macro front, Challenger Gray & Christmas revealed US employers announced 102,943 cuts in January, a marked 136% increase from the 43,651 cuts announced in December and 44% higher than the same time a year earlier.
Elsewhere, US unemployment claims continued to run below forecasts over the preceding week, defying expectations for a post-Christmas rebound. According to the Department of Labor, initial jobless claims fell 3,000 over the week ended 28 January to 183,000. Meanwhile, the four-week moving average, which aims to smooth out the volatility in the data from one week to the next, dropped by 5,750 to 191,750.
On another note, fourth-quarter labour productivity in the US was higher than expected, helping to limit unit labour cost growth. According to the Department of Labor, non-farm labor productivity increased at a quarterly annualised clip of 3.0% over the three months to December.
Finally, new orders for US-made goods increased 1.8% month-on-month in December, according to the Census Bureau, rebounding from an upwardly revised 1.9% fall in November but short of market forecasts of 2.2%.
Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com
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