By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks were mixed at the end of choppy session on Thursday as investors digested a spate of earnings, while waning concerns over widening tariff conflicts capped gold’s string of record highs.
Amazon’s shares fell in extended trading as investors scrutinized its after-the-bell earnings, and awaited the January employment report due from the Labor Department on Friday.
During regular trading, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq see-sawed to modest daily gains, while the Dow inched lower and benchmark Treasury yields appeared set to snap their three-day slide.
“Today’s market action is largely driven by the earnings that came out last night and this morning,” said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia. “You had a totally mixed bag of earnings and slashed guidance from a variety of companies in a variety of industries.”
Honeywell shares fell after the industrial conglomerate announced it would split into three separate companies and provided downbeat 2025 forecasts.
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 kept simmering, although fears have eased that U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to tariffs could escalate into a global trade war.
“We are witnessing a resilient economy … against a backdrop of geopolitical concerns, and an expectation of some sort of chaos down the road,” said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors in New York.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 125.65 points, or 0.28%, to 44,747.63, the S&P 500 rose 22.09 points, or 0.36%, to 6,083.57 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 99.66 points, or 0.51%, to 19,791.99.
European shares touched an all-time high, powered by upbeat earnings, as investors weighed the possibility of a Ukraine peace plan.
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 0.88 points, or 0.10%, to 872.57.
The STOXX 600 index rose 1.17%, while Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 26.54 points, or 1.24%.
Emerging market stocks rose 6.63 points, or 0.61%, to 1,102.42. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed higher by 0.62%, to 580.13, 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 1.8 basis points to 4.438%, from 4.42% late on Wednesday.The 30-year bond yield rose 0.4 basis points to 4.6457% 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 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 the euro,rose 0.02% to 107.67, with the euro down 0.14% at $1.0387.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.72% to 151.5.
Sterling weakened 0.54% to $1.2439.The Mexican peso < MXN=> strengthened 0.69% versus the dollar at 20.46.
The Canadian dollar strengthened 0.01% versus the greenback to C$1.43 per dollar.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin fell 0.12% to $96,808.46. Ethereum declined 2.6% to $2,713.94
Oil prices reversed earlier gains amid choppy trading as President Trump’s renewed pledge to boost production raised oversupply concerns.
U.S. crude dropped 0.59% to $70.61 per barrel, while Brent fell to $74.29 per barrel, down 0.43% on the day.
Gold reversed its multi-session rally, which was driven by a risk-off flight to safety that drove the precious metal to a record high.
Spot gold fell 0.3% to $2,856.40 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.39% to $2,860.50 an ounce.
(Reporting by Stephen Culp; additional reporting by Marc Jones and Alun John; editing by Mark Heinrich, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
