By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks struggled for gains on Thursday amid a spate of earnings, while waning concerns over widening tariff conflicts capped gold’s string of record highs.
Meanwhile, a rate cut from the Bank of England (BoE) helped European shares scale an all-time peak.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were up modestly, with financials and consumer staples clear outperformers, and benchmark U.S. Treasury yields snapped a three-day decline.
Honeywell shares fell after the industrial conglomerate announced it would split into three separate companies and provided downbeat 2025 forecasts.
Amazon’s results were expected after the bell, with the e-commerce giant under pressure to deliver on lofty expectations for cloud computing after unimpressive reports from Microsoft and Alphabet this week.
On the economic front, jobless claims, layoffs and labor costs/productivity provided a prologue to Friday’s keenly anticipated January employment report.
Domestic and international political uncertainties continue to simmer in the background, while fears that U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to tariffs could escalate into a global trade war have somewhat diminished.
“We continue to see much of the same that we’ve seen witnessed over the last two to four months,” said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors in New York. “We are witnessing a resilient economy with strong corporate earnings, against a backdrop of geopolitical concerns, and an expectation of some sort of chaos down the road.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 139.61 points, or 0.31%, to 44,732.02, the S&P 500 rose 9.09 points, or 0.15%, to 6,070.36 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 19.36 points, or 0.09%, to 19,710.54.
European shares touched an all-time high, powered by a slew of upbeat earnings, while Britain’s FTSE 100 also reached a record peak as the BoE cut interest rates by 25 basis points but warned it would be cautious going forward, in the face of a potential inflation uptick and geopolitical worries.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 2.40 points, or 0.28%, to 874.09.
The STOXX 600 index rose 1.26%, while Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 28.09 points, or 1.31%
Emerging market stocks were up 6.02 points, or 0.55%, to 1,101.81. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed higher by 0.61%, to 580.08, while Japan’s Nikkei rose 235.05 points, or 0.61%, to 39,066.53.
U.S. Treasury yields drifted slightly higher, on course to snap a three-day slide to multi-week lows as trade war jitters subsided and investors trained their focus on Friday’s payrolls report.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 3.6 basis points to 4.456%, from 4.42% late on Wednesday.The 30-year bond yield rose 2.6 basis points to 4.6676% from 4.642% late on Wednesday.
The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, rose 2.7 basis points to 4.212%, from 4.185% late on Wednesday.
The dollar edged higher as the Japanese yen hit an 8-week high while the pound sterling lost ground in the wake of the BoE rate decision, after reaching a one-month high on Wednesday.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and euro,rose 0.15% to 107.81, with the euro down 0.31% at $1.037.Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.43% to151.96.
Sterling weakened 0.6% to $1.2431.
The Mexican peso < MXN=> strengthened 0.47% versus the dollar at 20.511.
The Canadian dollar strengthened 0.01% versus the greenback to C$1.43 per dollar.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin fell 0.13% to $96,799.18. Ethereum declined 2.82% to $2,707.61.
Oil prices inched higher after Saudi Arabia’s state oil company sharply raised its March crude prices.
U.S. crude rose 0.2% to $71.17 a barrel and Brent rose to $74.75 per barrel, up 0.17% on the day.
Gold reversed its multi-session rally, which was driven by a risk-off flight to safety that drove the previous metal to a record high.
Spot gold fell 0.41% to $2,853.25 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.53% to $2,856.50 an ounce.
(Reporting by Stephen Culp; additional reporting by Marc Jones and Alun John; editing by Mark Heinrich)
