US open: Stocks mixed as earnings remain in focus

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Wall Street stocks were mixed early on Friday as a busy week for corporate earnings gets set to draw to a close.

As of 1530 BST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.17% at 32,091.83, while the S&P 500 was 0.07% softer at 3,995.97 and the Nasdaq Composite came out the gate 0.58% weaker at 11,990.26.

The Dow opened 54.93 points higher on Friday, extending gains recorded in the previous session.

Corporate earnings continued to be the session's primary focus on Friday, with shares in Snapchat parent company Snap losing more than a quarter of their value in extending trading after the group posted second-quarter results overnight that failed to meet expectations on the Street and said it now plans to slow hiring.

Elsewhere, Twitter said on Friday that it swung to a loss of $270.0m in the second quarter as revenue dipped 1% to $1.18bn, with the social media platform highlighting uncertainty surrounding the pending acquisition by Tesla owner Elon Musk.

American Express posted a huge earnings beat, driven by strong customer spending throughout the quarter, while Verizon cut full-year forecasts after posting a huge wireless miss.

Also drawing an amount of investor attention was news that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to sign a deal to restart their grain exports after the cessation thereof caused a threat to soft commodities' supply.

On the macro front, business activity in the US shrank unexpectedly in July for the first time since mid-2020, with S&P Global's services sector purchasing managers' index declining from a reading of 52.7 in June to 47.0 in July - short of consensus estimates for a print of 51.0.

The comparable PMI for manufacturing fared a tad better than expected, printing at 52.3, down from June's level of 52.7 but above the 52.0 forecast by economists, while a composite index tracking output levels in both factory and services fell from 52.3 to 47.5.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com

Dow Jones - Risers

American Express Co. (AXP) $156.45 4.17%
Home Depot Inc. (HD) $308.93 1.29%
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) $142.52 1.24%
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) $38.88 1.08%
Unitedhealth Group Inc. (UNH) $526.23 0.72%
Amgen Inc. (AMGN) $246.93 0.47%
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) $61.64 0.46%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) $171.90 0.34%
Walmart Inc. (WMT) $132.95 0.30%
3M Co. (MMM) $134.33 0.28%