US stocks mixed, Dow falls, Nasdaq up

BD: I worry about banks upended a stock market rally Wednesday. Financial stocks steered the overall market for the third straight day after Morgan Stanley and credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp. posted lackluster quarterly reports.
Investors have been worried about rising levels of souring debt on bank balance sheets. A late-session drop in banks left Wall Street's major benchmarks mixed.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 83 points, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index ended modestly higher ahead of a quarterly report from eBay Inc. and following earnings from Yahoo Inc.
Banks had tumbled on Monday after Bank of America warned of further loan losses, only to jump back on Tuesday after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress that most banks were well-capitalized.
The jumpy trading in financial shares came just as major companies report first-quarter earnings. Results from AT&T, Boeing and McDonald's contained glimmers of hope about consumer spending and the economy in general.
"We're starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel," said Frank Ingarra, co-portfolio manager at Hennessy Funds. "The challenge is I don't know how long the tunnel is."

Shah Anaym Kabir, DSE,LSE and NYSE Newswriter; Stock Analyst- DVPE. s.anaym@yahoo.com

S&P 500 1Q Earnings Expected To Drop 35%

The outlook for overall first-quarter results improved slightly in the past week, mostly because of better-than-expected results from banking giants Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), according to Thomson Reuters. The composite first-quarter earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are expected to drop 35%, compared with a forecast decline of 37% last week.
Declines are expected in nine of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 Index from a year earlier, compared with all 10 sectors seeing lower earnings last week. The health-care sector now is likely to break even overall. Still, nine is the highest number of sectors with lower earnings since Thomson Reuters began tracking sector growth rates in 1998.
The consumer discretionary sector, which includes auto makers, is the only sector projecting a loss, while materials, which includes chemicals, expects a 80% decline and energy a 61% drop.
Next week, five of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and nearly a third of the S&P 500 are scheduled to post results.
Through Friday, 177 companies in the S&P 500 have reported, with 61% posting results above analyst expectations, 11% in line and 28% below estimates. In a typical quarter, 61% beat estimates, 19% match and 20% miss estimates. In the past eight quarters, 63% beat estimates, 11% matched and 26% missed.
All together, companies are reporting earnings that are 16% above the estimates.

Written By - Shah Anaym Kabir, Financial Analyst, Dee Vere Private Equitees; s.anaym@yahoo.com