FINANCIAL MARKETS
U.S. stocks snapped a three-day winning streak Tuesday as weak company earnings and outlooks weighed on the market. Major indexes wavered between small gains and losses for most of the day before settling slightly lower in the last 15 minutes of trading. The slide in crude oil prices deepened. Investors are mostly focused on corporate America the next couple of weeks as the third-quarter earnings season unfolds. This week and next week are particularly heavy, with big companies including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Apple reporting earnings.
Traders are trying to glean whether the global economy is slowing and how U.S. companies are coping with factors like the stronger dollar, which can crimp profits for companies as their goods become pricier overseas. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 13.43 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,217.11. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.89 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,030.77. The Nasdaq composite shed 24.50 points, or 0.5 percent, to 4,880.97. The Dow is down 3.4 percent this year, while the S&P 500 is off 1.4 percent. The Nasdaq is up 3.1 percent for the year. Weak hardware sales and the impact of the strong dollar hurt IBM’s results in the third quarter. The company, which reported its latest results late Monday, was among the stocks to slump on Tuesday as investors sized up earnings. The stock weighed heavily on the 30-stock Dow, losing $8.58, or 5.7 percent, to $140.64. About 57 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 index report earnings over the next two weeks. That works out to about 117 companies this week, including Boeing, General Motors and eBay on Wednesday.
Investors also bid up shares in Team Health Holdings on news that AmSurg is offering to buy the health care staffing and services company in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $7.8 billion. Team Health vaulted $10.09, or 19.2 percent, to $62.59. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 34 cents to $45.55 a barrel in New York. U.S. crude has fallen six of the last seven trading days. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose 10 cents to $48.71 a barrel in London.
In other trading, wholesale gasoline rose 2.7 cents to close at $1.278 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while heating oil was little changed at $1.449 a gallon. Natural gas rose 3.4 cents to close at $2.476 per 1,000 cubic feet.
U.S. government bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.07 percent from 2.02 percent the day before. The euro rose to $1.1347 and the dollar rose to 119.85 yen.