US close: Wall Street closes in the green as earnings season peaks

Wall Street bounced back quickly but modestly on Thursday as the peak day of the earnings season was rather mixed, with investors still getting over their disappointment over White House tax cut plans the previous day.

News that the White House was not going to pursue an exit from NAFTA, opting instead for a renegotiation, provided some relief.

By the closing dong of the bell, with the dollar index inching up, the Dow Jones Industrials Average had picked up just over six points to end at 20,981.33, alongside gains of almost 24 points for the Nasdaq Composite to 6,048.94 and a rise of just 1.3 for the S&P 500 to 2,388.77.

Intel and Microsoft led the Dow higher during the session but both disappointed as they reported their numbers after-hours, with Microsoft dropping in after-hours trade as revenues missed forecast, while Intel slipped on an earnings miss.

More impressive results in the tech world arrived from Google's parent company Alphabet where forecast-beating earnings impressed, while Amazon's sales and earnings both beat forecasts to send the stock to record levels.

The day before, stocks had edged lower as investors were left disappointed by the lack of specifics in President Donald Trump's tax reform announcement. As widely expected, the announcement included plans to cut corporate tax to 15% from 35% and reduce the top individual tax rate to 35% from 39.6%.

Yet the US administration's proposals did not include specifics on the costing of the cuts.

"It was never particularly likely that the Trump administration was going to be able to deliver on the expectations of the market and so it has been proved, though the effect on the US dollar hasn't been particularly marked," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

The US indices however diverged from their cousins across the water, with the FTSE 100 and European markets giving up group.

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, declared: "The latest attempt to get the Trump bounce moving again has barely got off the ground; disappointment with the tax plan is palpable, and if it weren’t for the looming end of the month, markets would probably be a quite a bit lower."

Macro-economic data on Thursday painted an uninspiring backdrop, with initial weekly jobless claims increasing by 14,000 during the week ending on 22 April to hit 257,000, above the 245,000 expected by analysts, while durable goods orders undershot market forecasts, rising by 0.7% month-on-month in March (consensus: 1.2%), although the miss was offset by upwards revisions to figures for the prior month.

The headline reading prompted Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, to say: "Doubtless this report will spark another round of hand-wringing over the gap between the soft and hard data, but the weather might well have materially depressed these numbers and we want to see what happens in the next couple of months before reaching any firm conclusions."

Shepherdson forecast that Friday will see a zero US GDP print, which "would generate plenty of headlines", but said this data was notoriously unreliable, with first quarter growth having been weaker than the average for the preceding three quarters in 21 of the 31 years since 1985 and in eight of the past 10 years —- and what's more is already partly out of date.

"The Fed puts much more weight on the labor market data, which have remained strong, with the exception of March's snow-depressed payroll number. Firms hire on the basis of what's happening to their business, not the GDP numbers, and right now we see no sign that they are anything but optimistic."

More corporate news

As well as the tech titans, PayPal gained some investor attention after its earnings late on Wednesday beat expectations and the company announced a $5bn stock-repurchase plan.

Number-three sports goods maker Under Armour posted its first ever quarterly loss as a public company, but still beat Wall Street expectations to send the shares jumping higher.

Ford stock dropped after the motor company posted a 35% fall in first quarter net income in comparison to the year ago level as the carmaker's bottom line was hit by safety recall expenses.

Dow Chemical on the other hand slipped despite reporting both and top line figures which exceeded analysts' forecasts.

American Airlines fell like a stone, retreating nearly 7% despite an in-line set of revenue figures for the first three months of the year, as the carrier announced a pay rise for its crew members.

Under-fire rival United Airlines was in the news for settling with the overbooked passenger infamously was dragged from one of its planes and said it will change its overbooking policy so that any passengers asked to give up their seat could be reimbursed as much as $10,000.

Dow Jones - Risers

Intel Corp. (INTC) $37.43 1.35%
Home Depot Inc. (HD) $156.12 1.23%
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) $33.75 1.05%
Boeing Co. (BA) $183.22 0.83%
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $68.27 0.65%
3M Co. (MMM) $196.11 0.57%
Nike Inc. (NKE) $55.47 0.56%
United Technologies Corp. (UTX) $118.78 0.49%
Walt Disney Co. (DIS) $115.86 0.22%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) $123.73 0.19%

Dow Jones - Fallers

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) $102.68 -1.89%
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (DD) $80.19 -1.81%
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) $46.67 -1.46%
JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) $87.62 -0.93%
General Electric Co. (GE) $29.08 -0.62%
Chevron Corp. (CVX) $105.52 -0.58%
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) $43.01 -0.53%
Visa Inc. (V) $91.60 -0.24%
American Express Co. (AXP) $80.33 -0.24%
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) $62.58 -0.19%

S&P 500 - Risers

Under Armour Inc. Class A (UAA) $21.67 9.94%
Intuit Inc. (INTU) $125.61 8.46%
Xilinx Inc. (XLNX) $64.40 7.35%
Paypal Holdings Inc (PYPL) $47.15 6.17%
Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ALXN) $126.91 5.12%
CBRE Group Inc (CBG) $36.00 4.20%
Kansas City Southern (KSU) $89.88 3.57%
Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) $55.65 3.53%
Micron Technology Inc. (MU) $27.63 3.14%
Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) $113.52 3.05%

S&P 500 - Fallers

Teradata Corp. (TDC) $29.36 -8.22%
F5 Networks Inc. (FFIV) $126.99 -7.51%
EQT Corp. (EQT) $59.37 -7.07%
FMC Technologies Inc. (FTI) $30.20 -6.39%
Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc (ZBH) $118.12 -5.76%
Helmerich & Payne Inc. (HP) $61.55 -5.61%
Alcoa Corporation (AA) $34.52 -5.29%
American Airlines Group (AAL) $43.98 -5.22%
Public Storage (PSA) $213.00 -4.88%
Tractor Supply Company (TSCO) $62.17 -4.79%