US open: Stocks flat as investors mull economic data

Wall Street's main market gauges are slightly lower heading into the Memorial Day weekend following the release of mixed economic data.

As of 1459 BST the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off by 0.08% or 14.82 points at 21,069.55, with the S&P 500 down by 0.01% or 0.28 points to 2,414.60 and the Nasdaq Composite retreating 0.04% or 2.17 points to 6,202.93.

From a sector standpoint, the worst performing areas of the market were: Oil equipment services (-3.26%), Coal (-2.74%) and Non-ferrous metals (-1.68%).

Meanwhile, oil prices reversed heavy losses to trade a little higher, with West Texas Intermediate up 0.51% to $49.15 a barrel. Prices had fallen sharply after the Opec meeting in Vienna resulted in a nine-month extension of the previously agreed 1.8m barrel-a-day production cut.

America's gross domestic product expanded at an upwardly revised pace of 1.2% during the first three months of 2017, revised data showed.

The Department of Commerce had initially pegged the rate of growth at 0.7% (consensus: 0.9%).

Orders for durable goods fell by 0.7% on the month in April, which was better than the 1.5% drop economists had been expecting. Significantly, growth for the prior month was revised up to show a rise of 2.3% instead of the 0.9% increase originally estimated.

Nonetheless, those revisions were on account of a sharp upwards revision to volatile data for aircraft orders in March. As well, core capital goods orders - perhaps the key gauge contained in that report - were flat in April (consensus: 0.5%).

The mood of US consumers was more buoyant in May, with the University of Michigan's sentiment index edging higher from 97.0 for April to 97.1.

That was lower than a preliminary reading of 97.5 but the expectations subindex improved from 87.0 to 87.7, a positive sign.

Shares in Deckers Outdoor surged 17.39% after the footwear designer surprised markets with first quarter earnings per share of 11 cents, which was far in excess of the -6 cent loss expected. The company's sales and full-year EPS guidance were also better-than-expected.

Discount retailer Big Lots is slightly higher after posting a first quarter EPS of $1.15, soundly beating estimates on the street for 99 cents.

However, its top line figure came in at $1.30bn, which was a shade below the $1.31bn analysts had anticipated.