U.S. Stocks Open in Positive Territory
Updated from 8:01 a.m. EDT
Stocks in the U.S. were edging higher at the open as traders healed some of their wounds following the prior day's selloff, even as oil shot past $130 a barrel for the first time ever.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
was up 21 points to 12,849, and the
S&P 500
added 3 points at 1416. The
Nasdaq Composite
gained 6 points to 2498. All three were up some 0.2%.
Last time out, stocks plunged as traders dealt with a number of disheartening developments, including a sliding dollar, rocketing oil prices and drab inflationary data.
As the new day began, traders appeared -- at least temporarily -- to be shrugging off oil's continued run into uncharted territory. After turning over to the July front-month contract, crude touched another all-time high of $130.47 a barrel. Recently, futures were up 13 cents at $129.11.
Gold futures were tacking on $4.50 to $920.20 an once. The U.S. dollar had another weak day, losing 0.5% to the euro at $1.5742 and softening by 0.1% against the yen at 103.56.
On the corporate front, after the market's prior close, Dow component
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
confirmed that fiscal second-quarter earnings
to $2.1 billion on rising revenue of $28.3 billion. The results were in line with what the computer maker announced last week, when the company simultaneously said it had
EDS
(EDS)
for $13.9 billion.
H-P shares were down 1%.
Meanwhile, TurboTax software maker
Intuit
(INTU) - Get Report
with adjusted earnings of $1.39 a share. Revenue jumped 15%, and the company issued in-line guidance for the current quarter. Shares tracked 2.9% higher.
Another tech name,
Analog Devices
(ADI) - Get Report
, booked a climbing profit for last quarter and set out bullish guidance for the next, but the chipmaker's gross margin was also down slightly from the prior quarter. The stock gave up 5.6%.
As for economic data, this afternoon the
Federal Reserve
is scheduled to release minutes from its April 30 gathering, when the central bank cut the fed funds target rate by another quarter-point to 2% and implied that it may be finished with its months-long easing campaign.
Elsewhere on the economic docket, the government should release its crude stockpile data for last week at 10:30 a.m. EDT.
Treasury prices were slipping. The 10-year note and the 30-year bond were each off 3/32 in price, yielding 3.79% and 4.54%, respectively.
The major overseas markets were mixed. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dropped 1.7% overnight, but the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong added 1.2%. Among European bourses, London's FTSE 100 was rising 0.4% as the Paris Cac lost that same amount. Germany's Xetra Dax gave up 0.5%.