U.S. Stocks Ease Early
Updated from 7:56 a.m. EDT
Wall Street was at a standstill early Thursday as mixed economic data helped offset the latest influx of disappointing corporate numbers.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
was up 30 points at 12,793, and the
S&P 500
added 2 points to 1382. The
Nasdaq Composite
rose 3 points to 2408.
Futures had been pointing to a sharply lower open, but the mood improved after the Labor Department reported that the number of people filing for unemployment benefits dropped by 33,000 people last week to a better-than-expected 342,000. The consensus called for an unchanged figure.
Also, durable-goods orders stepped back 0.3% last month, according to the Commerce Department. That's worse than the flat number economists were expecting, but still an improvement on February's figure, which itself was revised to minus 0.9% from the prior drop of 1.7%.
Elsewhere, the Census Bureau said new-home sales in March sank 8.5% to a 526,000 annual pace. A number more on the order of 580,000 had been anticipated.
Among equities,
Ford's
(F) - Get Report
shares bounced 6.7% after the carmaker posted a surprise first-quarter profit of $100 million thanks to a robust showing in Europe and South America. That offset a loss in its North American segment, which itself was narrowed sharply from last year.
Also rising was
Credit Suisse
(CS) - Get Report
, despite posting its first shortfall in more than five years as it wrote off $5.14 billion in bad assets. That pales in comparison to writedowns at Swiss rival
UBS
(UBS) - Get Report
, however, and Credit Suisse called its capital position "strong," suggesting it won't need to raise any cash, as UBS was forced to do this month. Credit Suisse shares rose 2.6%.
Weighing on tech shares, meanwhile, was
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
. The maker of Macs and iPhones comfortably bested analyst estimates last quarter with a 36% jump in profit, but also guided under earnings estimates for the current quarter. Shares were off 1.9%.
Amazon.com
(AMZN) - Get Report
, another tech titan, was slumping 4.1% after easing its 2008 operating-earnings forecast and reporting an essentially flat operating margin in the first quarter. Analysts were hoping for some improvement. The Internet retailer also reported better-than-expected earnings of $143 million on soaring sales of $4.13 billion.
Similarly,
Motorola
(MOT)
surrendered 4% after its quarterly loss and weak second-quarter projection.
Outside of tech,
Starbucks
(SBUX) - Get Report
was also losing ground on its soft guidance. The coffee seller said tough economic conditions should keep its customer-traffic numbers down and force a first-quarter profit drop to 15 cents a share from 19 cents last year. That's well under the consensus estimate. Shares were plunging 11%.
Scheduled to report after the market close are Dow components
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
and
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
.
Among commodities, crude oil was losing 80 cents to $117.50 a barrel, and gold futures gave up $5.10 at $903.90 an ounce. The U.S. dollar climbed 0.9% against the euro at $1.5746 while weakening fractionally against the yen.
Treasury prices were little changed recently. The 10-year note was up 1/32 in price to yield 3.73%, and the 30-year bond was flat in price, yielding 4.49%.
Markets overseas were mostly in retreat. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong jumped 1.6% overnight at 25.681, but Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 0.3%. In Europe, London's FTSE 100 dropped 1.7%, Germany's Xetra Dax shed 0.7%, and the Paris Cac fell 1.4%.