Thursday, the US stock market closed mixed with marginal change. Initially the market gained on the back of the solid first quarter earnings report from IBM that was better than expected. IBM also increased its full-year earnings outlook above the consensus forecast. The financials sector came into demand backed by the Citigroup’s announcement that it will sell CitiCapital, its North American commercial lending and leasing business, to General Electric''s GE Capital. However, the disappointing announcements from investment bank Merrill Lynch and pharmaceutical company Pfizer affected the investor sentiments. Merrill Lynch announced a loss of $2.20 per share, which fell $0.21 short of the consensus earnings estimate. The firm also announced asset backed security write-downs of $1.5 billion and an additional $3.0 billion in write-downs related to financial guarantees. As for Pfizer, the company reported first quarter earnings of $0.61 per share. 

On the economic front, Jobless claims for the week ending April 12 came in at 372,000 as against the economists expectations of 375,000. Claims were up from the prior week''s revised reading of 355,000 jobless claims.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) improved by 1.22 points to close at 12,620.49. The S&P 500 (SPX) index increased by 0.85 points to close at 1,365.56 and the NASDAQ Composite (RIXF) fell 8.28 points to close at 2,341.83.

Among the Dow’s 30 components, 17 components ended in green mainly led by the financial shares like American Express, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase up by 2.2%, 1.3% and 0.4% respectively.

A total of more than 0.7bn shares were traded on the NASDAQ, with declining stocks overtook the advancing stocks by 8 to 5. On NYSE around 1.2bn shares traded for the day, with declining stocks outpaced the advancing stocks by 8 to 7.

Crude oil futures for the month of May delivery closed lower by $0.07 at $114.86 per barrel on New York Mercantile Exchange. The crude prices fell slightly after dollar bounced back against Euro.

The gold prices for the month of June delivery fell by $5.40 to settle at $942.90 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold prices slipped after the dollar rebounded against the euro.

Tags: us market, nasdaq, nyse. dow jones