While you were sleeping: Apple hits new high as Wall Street is steady
Updated: Apple shares rise 0.8% to become the first US company to reach $US900 billion in value.
Stocks on Wall Street closed on an upward note after a volatile session of gains and losses dominated by the latest batch of corporate earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up 6.13 points, or 0.03%, at 23,563.36. The S&P 500 rose 0.14% at 2594.38, a new high, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.3% to 6789.12.
More than 85% of S&P 500 companies have reported third-quarter results, with roughly three-quarters of them beating earnings expectations.
Per-share earnings at the firms have grown about 6.4% in the third quarter from the year-earlier period.
“That’s a deceleration from what we’ve had, but for 2018, I don’t think people are backing off what we project,” Jeremy Bryan, a portfolio manager at Gradient Investments, told Dow Jones.
Apple, the largest company in the S&P 500, hit another milestone after reporting its best quarterly growth in two years last week. Apple shares rose 0.8% to a new high, making the iPhone maker the first public US company to ever reach a market value of $US900 billion.
Snap shares plunge
Shares of Snap fell 15% after its quarterly results fell short of expectations. Shares were down as much as 20% but reversed direction after the company disclosed that Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings bought a 12% stake.
Time Warner was among the biggest decliners in the S&P 500. Shares fell 6.5% after a top AT&T executive warned for the first time that the company was unsure about the timing of its planned takeover of Time Warner.
Bank shares continued to lag, hit by a shrinking gap between short and long-dated bond yields. The US yield curve, or the gap between two and 10-year Treasury yields, is at its flattest since 2007.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.322% from 2.309% on Tuesday. A year after the US presidential election, investors have realised that anything related to tax reform will take longer and look different than what was initially discussed, says Jonathan Mackay, investment strategist at Schroders.
“We do see a high probability for a tax cut, but it will probably be different from what we’ve seen from the Republican plan so far,” he says.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 declined less than 0.1%. The UK’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2%, France’s CAC 40 fell 0.2% and Germany’s DAX was unchanged.
Nevil Gibson
Thu, 09 Nov 2017
Thu, 09 Nov 2017
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While you were sleeping: Apple hits new high as Wall Street is steady
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