Stocks held steady Tuesday in a calm day on Wall Street, as earnings reporting season ramped up for big companies.
- The S&P 500 slipped 8.67 points, or 0.2%, to 5,555.74
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged down by 57.35, or 0.1%, to 40,358.09.
- The Nasdaq composite dipped 10.22, or 0.1%, to 17,997.35.
The smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 continued their big run and rose 1%. They've flipped the market's leaderboard recently and zoomed higher on hopes for coming cuts to interest rates, the
AP reports.
Dozens of companies were reporting their results for the spring on Tuesday, with a couple of highly influential Big Tech companies coming after trading ends for the day in Alphabet and Tesla. Expectations are generally high, and analysts are forecasting the strongest profit growth for S&P 500 companies since late 2021, according to FactSet. GE Aerospace thrust 6.6% higher after beating analysts' forecasts for profit in the spring and raising its forecast for earnings over the full year. It was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
Danaher rose 5.3% after likewise reporting better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, in part because of strength at its Cepheid molecular testing business. Sherwin-Williams climbed 6.9% after also delivering stronger profit than expected. It said it's seeing growth in demand for paint from new residential customers.
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On the losing end of Wall Street, UPS tumbled 12.1% after delivering weaker profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected. But CEO Carol Tomé said the company's US business delivered more packages than a year earlier, its first such growth in nine quarters, and called it a "significant turning point for our company." Comcast dropped 2.6% after reporting revenue for the spring that fell short of expectations. Its biggest declines came from lower attendance at its US theme parks and from its studios business.
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