S&P 500 Sidesteps Positive Earnings as Tech, Energy Slip

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 fell Thursday, shrugging off another wave of mostly positive earnings as struggles in tech weighed on the broader market.

The S&P 500 fell 0.42%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.06%, or 21 points, the Nasdaq was down 0.83%.

Banks continued to report quarterly results that topped Wall Street expectations, helping financials snap out of their recent malaise even as U.S. bond yields continued to make losses.  

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) was flat after reporting second-quarter results that beat expectations on the both the top and bottom lines as strength in equities trading and investment banking fees bolstered performance.

The regional banks, however, fared better with U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) and Truist Financial (NYSE:TFC) topping Wall Street estimates, sending both shares more than 2% higher.

But the backdrop of positive quarterly results did little to spark a bid in the broader market as energy and tech stocks led the downside.

Energy stocks declined about 1% paced by a decline in oil prices on expectations for further supply after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reportedly reached a compromise that should lead to an easing of production curbs.

The major cap tech stocks struggled to keep up their recent moment.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT were in the red.

On the economic front, the recovery in the labor market continues to gather pace as jobless claims fell to a pandemic low.

Initial jobless claims fell 26,000 to 360k from an upwardly-revised 386,000 in the week ending July 10.

“There was a noticeable reversal of progress in the claims data in mid-June, but the data of the last three weeks suggests that the recovery is back on track,” Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) said in a note.

The mailaise in the broader market comes just a day before the release of the retail sales data. The data will serve as a gauge for the health of the consumer.

The consumer, which makes up two thirds of the economic growth, is expected to keep the economy humming along, and take up the supportive void expected to be left by the Fed when the central bank eventually begins to tighten monetary policy.

“In a K-shape recovery [...] you need to consumers to come in and be healthy and provide support, because there has to be a handoff from, from a Fed-supported economy to a consumer-supported economy,” Darren Schuringa, CEO of ASYMmetric ETF told Investing.com earlier this week.

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