Stocks stall a day after S&P 500 posts record close - CNBC

Stocks traded slightly higher on Wednesday as Wall Street also digested another batch of corporate earnings.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2% to hit an intraday record high. The S&P 500 climbed 0.1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 16 points.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq reached its milestone after notching a record closing high on Tuesday, along with the S&P 500. The two indexes were boosted by strong corporate earnings results from companies like United Technologies, Coca-Cola and Twitter.

The move came less than six months after a massive drop in December, which led to Wall Street's worst year since the financial crisis. But a pivot by the Federal Reserve in monetary policy away from higher rates and the cooling of trade tensions between China and the U.S. helped stocks rally from those lows.

Technology led the comeback, rising more than 36% since Christmas Eve. Xerox is the best-performing stock in the sector since then, rising about 80%.

"Right now, it feels like there's some FOMO going on," said Christian Fromhertz, CEO of The Tribeca Trade Group. "That's what's pushing us up in this last leg."

"I think we're going to see a consolidation at some point," he said. "It's not to say we need a major pullback; I just think we need to consolidate the gains a little bit. That may happen with what comes out with some of the bigger tech names."

Facebook and Microsoft are among the companies set to report later on Wednesday, while Amazon is scheduled to release its results on Thursday.

Nearly 130 S&P 500 companies have reported calendar first-quarter earnings so far. Of those companies, 78% have reported better-than-forecast profits, according to Refinitiv.

"If there's an earnings recession out there, it's hard to see in the latest batch of earnings reports," Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, wrote in a note.

Earlier on Wednesday, Caterpillar reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the previous quarter. However, the stock fell more than 3%. Boeing shares, meanwhile, rose 1% despite the company pulling its 2019 guidance and halting its buyback program.

Domino's Pizza, meanwhile rose 10% on stronger-than-forecast quarterly results. Anthem and Biogen's earnings also beat estimates.

—CNBC's Sam Meredith contributed to this report.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/stock-market-wall-street-looks-to-facebook-microsoft-earnings.html

2019-04-24 14:22:26Z
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