Wall St rises as IBM and Texas results hit after bell
US stocks rose yesterday, spurred by optimism ahead of earnings from key technology companies and after Dow component Boeing announced strong orders.
Investors bet on solid reports from International Business Machines (IBM), the world’s largest technology services provider, and chip maker Texas Instruments, hoping both would show strength similar to Intel’s results last week.
But shares of IBM fell more than three per cent after the closing bell after revenues missed expectations, and Texas Instruments slumped 5.6 per cent.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 56.53 points, or 0.56 per cent, to 10,154.43. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 6.37 points, or 0.60 per cent, to 1,071.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 19.18 points, or 0.88 per cent, to 2,198.23.
The S&P 500 hit a session low of about 1,061, roughly at the index’s 14-day moving average and the 23.6 per cent retracement of the benchmark index’s 2010 high-to-low decline.
Volume was among the lightest, with 7.1bn shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of almost two to one, while on the Nasdaq, three stocks rose for every two that fell.