Markets |
Wall Street falls as earnings weigh; Dow,
S&P up for month
DJ 17,773.64 -57.12 NAS: 4,775.36
-29.93 S&P: 2,065.30
-10.51
(Reuters) U.S. stocks posted their largest weekly drop
in more than two months on Friday as earnings reports continued to weigh, but
the S&P 500 and Dow managed to close up for April after strong showings
mid-month.
Company results once more gave the market direction as a 9
percent decline in Gilead Sciences shares weighed the most on both the S&P
and the Nasdaq Composite.
Apple shares were down
for the tenth session in the last 11 and closed the week down 11.3 percent, the
largest such decline since January 2013. Its April fall was of 14 percent.
Apple and Gilead,
alongside Corning, Goodyear and Xerox are among the companies that reported
earnings this week and are closing them with double-digit declines in their
stock.
"Every sort of case-by-case blowup was handled in a
company-specific fashion and lo and behold this week we have stumbled into some
household names that kind of rolled the market over with them," said Art
Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York.
The Dow Jones industrial
average fell 57.12 points, or 0.32 percent, to 17,773.64, the S&P 500 lost
10.51 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,065.3 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped
29.93 points, or 0.62 percent, to 4,775.36.
The weekly declines were of 1.3 percent for both the Dow and
S&P and the Nasdaq fell 2.7 percent. It was the largest weekly drop for the
Dow since the week to Feb. 12, and for the S&P and Nasdaq the declines were
the largest going back to Feb. 5.
For the month, only the Nasdaq ended in negative territory.
"Today's fall is just noise after the massive movement
we've seen in the past few weeks," said Scott Wren, senior global equity
strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in St. Louis.
Materials stocks on the
S&P 500 fell 0.6 percent Friday, taking the index down 0.3 percent for the
week. However its April
gain of 4.9 percent adds to advances in February and March that make the
three-month increase of more than 20 percent the largest for the sector
in any three consecutive months going back to September 2009.
On Friday Amazon
jumped 9.6 percent to $659.59 after the company's quarterly results blew past
analysts' expectations.
First-quarter earnings from S&P 500 components are expected
to have fallen 5.7 percent from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters
I/B/E/S. Of the 311 companies that have reported, 57 percent reported revenue
above analyst expectations, compared with the long-term average of 60 percent.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
ratio of 1.36-to-1 and on the Nasdaq a 1.81-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted four new 52-week highs and three new
lows; the Nasdaq recorded 42 new highs and 32 new lows.
Volume on U.S. exchanges
totaled just above 9 billion shares, compared with the 7.0 billion
average over the past 20 sessions.
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