US stocks tick higher as earnings pour in
Tue Oct 27 02:19:52 EST 2009
Mon Oct 26 15:19:52 UTC 2009
NEW YORK, Oct 26 AFP - US stocks ticked higher on Monday as investors braced for another wave of company earnings reports after the market faltered last week despite results that generally topped analyst forecasts.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 23.20 points (0.23 per cent) to 9,995.38 in opening trade.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 9.75 points (0.45 per cent) to 2,164.22 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 3.07 points (0.28 per cent) to 1,082.67.
With the economic calendar bare on Monday, Patrick O'Hare, an analyst at Briefing.com, said that investors would be watching to see how the stock market responds to "good news."
"If last week was any guide, then obviously the bar of expectations has risen," he said.
Wall Street faltered on Friday, leaving the major indices with their first weekly loss of the month, as a flood of quarterly earnings that largely exceeded expectations appeared to leave investors unimpressed.
On Friday the Dow fell 1.08 per cent, the Nasdaq shed 0.50 per cent and the S&P 500 lost 1.22 per cent.
Stocks declined in broad-based fashion despite better-than-expected existing home sales data and earnings from computer software giant Microsoft.
