Mixed economic signs give stocks a moderate boost
Stocks posted moderate gains Thursday as economic data came in mixed and hopeful investors awaited the fourth-quarter results of two major companies.
The Dow Jones industrials gained almost 30 points.
Shares of Intel jumped 2.5% in anticipation of the chip giant’s earnings, which came out after the closing bell and easily exceeded expectations.
And JPMorgan Chase climbed 1%, boosting the overall financial sector, in anticipation of its quarterly report slated for early today.
But relatively light trading volume Thursday suggested many investors were waiting for the trickle of earnings reports so far to start to turn into a deluge next week, said Ryan Larson, a trader at RBC Global Asset Management in Chicago.
“The market’s kind of in a wait-and-see mode until we get more earnings in,” Larson said. “The way we sit right now, the recovery story has been priced in, and expectations for earnings are set pretty high. People are leery to get their feet wet until we get some results.”
Bank stocks moved up despite a call by President Obama for a new tax on about 50 of the country’s largest financial firms. It would generate an estimated $9 billion a year as a way to recoup taxpayer losses on bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
On the economic front, retail sales in December unexpectedly declined 0.3% from November, after seasonally adjusting the data, according to the Commerce Department.
Weekly unemployment figures also disappointed. The number of people filing for jobless benefits for the first time last week rose more than expected to 444,000.
On the plus side, businesses increased their inventories in November, suggesting they were growing more confident in their respective parts of the economy.
The Dow climbed 29.78 points, or 0.3%, to 10,710.55.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 2.78 points, or 0.2% to 1,148.46, marking its eighth advance in the nine trading sessions since the start of the year.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index, bolstered by Intel’s rise, gained 8.84 points, or 0.4%, to 2,316.74.
Intel, which rose 52 cents to $21.48 a share in regular trading, climbed as high as $21.71 after hours.
The company reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.3 billion, nearly 10 times its net income in the fourth quarter of 2008.
In overseas markets, key stock indexes rose 0.4% in Germany and France and 0.5% in Britain. Shares in Japan jumped 1.6%.
nathaniel.popper@
latimes.com
