Stocks Close Higher After Turbulent Session

The Dow and S&P close up about 0.3% and the Nasdaq up 1.2% after deluge of mixed earnings reports.
By Sarina Penn ,

Updated from 4:13 p.m. EDT

Stocks in the U.S. underwent a volatile session Wednesday amid another flood of mixed earnings reports, ultimately finishing to the upside.

The

Dow Jones Industrial Average

shot up nearly 120 points in late morning before sinking back to earth and then climbed steadily in the last half of the session.

In the end, the Dow added 42.99 points at 12,763.22, and the

S&P 500

was up 3.99 points to 1379.93, as both indices booked gains of about 0.3%. The

Nasdaq Composite

stayed well in positive territory throughout, and ended higher by 28.27 points, or 1.19%, to 2405.21.

"We're in one of those days where there's no economic data, so we're just going company by company, conference call by conference call," said Art Hogan, chief market analyst with Jefferies. "Everything gets a reaction or, much of the time, an overreaction. It's not so unusual to have this kind of day as we try to assess where we stand so far in the earnings season."

Since no big economic reports were released, he said, the market has no anchor. "There's no underlying feeling that things are better or worse, no sort of overarching thought, so stocks can go on this crazy rollercoaster."

Charles Rotblut, senior market analyst with Zacks Investment Research, also pointed out that when equity measures briefly surged this morning, they encountered the old February highs that served as the top end of their trading range for most of 2008. The indices had managed to worked past those resistance levels on Friday, but Rotblut believes they could be heading back into that range, given the lack of follow-through so far.

Paul Nolte, director of investments with Hinsdale Associates, concurs. "We're still in that range," he said, noting that he has pegged the S&P top at 1400 and the Dow high-end at around 12,900. "We got right up to the top of that at the end of last week and turned tail from there. I think the market on the whole is still in a corrective phase from this month's really."

Despite the higher close, breadth was lackluster to poor. Advancers only barely edged out decliners on the

New York Stock Exchange

, and on the Nasdaq -- which saw the strongest finish by far -- losers outpaced winners by a 3-to-2 margin. Volume on the exchanges reached roughly 2.03 billion and 2.14 billion shares, respectively.

Nolte noted that the technology-laden Nasdaq, in particular, was being heavily skewed by only a few standout names. "Below the surface, the market's not acting very well," he said.

Among those brighter spots in tech, meanwhile, was virtualization-software developer

VMware

(VMW) - Get Report

, which posted better-than-expected sales and saw shares bounce 4.9%.

Broadcom's

(BRCM)

top line was also above par, and the chipmaker's first-quarter earnings

climbed 21%

. Its shares surged 16.3%.

Also,

Apple

(AAPL) - Get Report

ran up 1.7% ahead of its earnings release. In post-close trading, however, the stock erased all of those losses, lately sinking 4.1%, after the Mac maker guided below Street estimates for the current quarter. As for the fiscal second quarter, earnings surged 36% to $1.05 billion on sales of $7.51 billion, easily beating expectations on both counts.

Away from the technology space,

Boeing

(BA) - Get Report

gave legs to the Dow after reporting that its quarterly profit swelled 38% year over year to $1.21 billion, surpassing estimates on a per-share basis. The aerospace-equipment maker was the index's best-performing component today, spiking 4.5% at $82.09.

Among the big losers, however, was

Ambac

( ABK). Shares tanked 42.6% after the beleaguered bond insurer posted a first-quarter shortfall of $1.66 billion, or $11.69 a share, as its results were weighed down by $2.77 billion in mortgage-related losses.

Back in the tech space,

Yahoo!

(YHOO)

turned in a first-quarter adjusted profit that topped subdued analyst targets, but shares were still off 1.6% as investors doubted the results would be stellar enough to force

Microsoft

(MSFT) - Get Report

to boost its $44.6 billion bid for the Internet-portal operator. A Credit Suisse analyst cut the stock to neutral from outperform on likeminded concerns.

Yahoo! has argued that the offer undervalues the company, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a conference, according to

Bloomberg

, that it won't increase the value of the proposal.

Elsewhere, both

Delta

(DAL) - Get Report

and prospective suitor

Northwest

( NWA) were hit by surging fuel costs last quarter and respectively posted adjusted shortfalls of $274 million and $191 million. Still, both stocks were taking back some of yesterday's big losses, which had been spurred by a tremendous miss at United Airlines parent

UAL Corp.

( UAUA).

Delta and Northwest announced earlier this month that they plan to merge. Shares each bumped into the green earlier, but were recently trading down 3.5% and 5%, respectively.

Shipping-services firm

UPS

(UPS) - Get Report

brought down its full-year forecast on broader economic worries while reporting an in-line first-quarter profit, and shares finished down 23 cents to $71.67.

Despite the deflating broad indices, however, Treasury prices continued to back off recently. The 10-year note was down 11/32 in price to yield 3.73%, and the 30-year bond sank 23/32 in price, yielding 4.49%.

Among commodities, crude oil reversed earlier gains, ticking up 23 cents to $118.30 a barrel, even after the Energy Information Administration said crude stockpiles rose by 2.4 million barrels last week.

Gold futures settled off $16.20 to $909 an ounce. The U.S. dollar firmed against both the euro and the yen as the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, tacked on 0.7%.

Back in equities,

Safeco

(SAF) - Get Report

catapulted by 45.8% after agreeing to sell itself to Liberty Mutual for $6.2 billion, or $68.25 a share, in cash.

GlaxoSmithKline

(GSK) - Get Report

agreed to take out

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals

(SIRT)

for $720 million, bringing Sirtris stock up 81.9%.

GlaxoSmith also outran first-quarter earnings estimates along with fellow health-care names

Schering-Plough

( SGP) and

Genzyme

( GENZ). Shares were up between 2% and 6.6%.

Similarly for health-care information provider

Cerner

(CERN) - Get Report

, which leaped 17.7% on stronger-than-expected earnings last quarter and above-par guidance for the full year. Health insurer

WellPoint

(WLP)

came in under Street targets and projected soft results for the full year, but shares were still better by 7.3%.

The major overseas markets were mostly higher. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 ticked up 0.2% overnight, and the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong spiked 1.4%. As for Europe, matters improved after early strength in U.S. shares, and London's FTSE 100 reversed to add 0.8%. Germany's Xetra Dax was up 1%, and the Paris Cac climbed 1.5%.

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