Following a week long winning streak, mixed earnings reports put a damper on investor confidence and send stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs) see-sawing in morning trading.
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Dynamics (AMD) reported a second-quarter loss of $0.62/share a far cry from the $0.47/share loss expected by Wall Street. On the positive side, Wells Fargo (WFC) reported a jump in earnings of 47% which resulted in profits of $0.57/share. These results smashed analysts’ expectations of $0.34/share. The financial sector remained busy, with disappointing earnings from Morgan Stanley (MS). The financial giant reported a loss of $1.10/share as compared to an expected loss of $0.49/share. The news sent the Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF) down nearly 1% in morning trading.
In the aerospace world, plane maker Boeing (BA) announced a 17% increase in second-quarter profits, earning $1.41/share and beat Wall Street’s expectations of $1.21/share. Revenues of the commercial airplane maker increased and announced that it will release a revised schedule for the long-delayed 787 jetliner.
Drug giant Pfizer (PFE) topped analysts’ expectations by a penny, reporting earnings of $0.48/share. Sales were down in all five of Pfizer’s units, but the final ink is getting ready to dry on its billion-dollar purchase of Wyeth (WYE). The news sent the SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals (XPH) up about 0.3% in morning trading.
In other news, GE Capital, the financing arm of conglomerate General Electric (GE) stated that it plans to exit the government’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program and will no longer issue government-guaranteed short-term debt and will be able to issue non-guaranteed long-term debt with maturities of up to three years.
There is more positive news that the recession may be coming to an end. The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that housing prices posted the smallest decline in 10 months in May. Prices fell 5.6% year over year in May and five U.S. regions witnessed price increases .
Overall, all three major U.S. indexes are down in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.2%, the S&P 500 is down 0.3% and the Nasdaq declined 0.1%.
For more stories on the financial sector, visit our financial category.
Kevin Grewal contributed to this article.