The US stock market is drifting near its record heights on Tuesday as the floodgates open for companies reporting how much profit they made during the summer.
The S&P 500 was up 0.1 per cent in afternoon trading and is sitting just 0.2 per cent below its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones was up 282 points, or 0.6 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite was edging down by 0.1 per cent.
Wall Street remains near record highs. Credit: Bloomberg
The Australian sharemarket is set to retreat, with futures pointing to a loss of 36 points, or 0.4 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.7 per cent on Tuesday. The Australian dollar was fetching US64.90¢ at 5.23am AEDT.
General Motors rallied 16.3 per cent after reporting stronger quarterly results than analysts expected, while also raising its forecasts for some full-year financial targets. CEO Mary Barra said it’s moving quickly to reduce its losses in 2026 and beyond for its electric-vehicle business, as “it is now clear” that EV adoption will be lower than planned.
RTX, the aerospace and defence company, and Danaher, the life sciences and diagnostics company, jumped nearly 8 per cent after delivering better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Coca-Cola rose 3.8 per cent after likewise topping Wall Street’s profit expectations.
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Warner Bros. Discovery leaped 10.8 per cent after the company said it’s now considering other options besides its previously announced split of Discovery Global off Warner Bros. that could be more profitable for shareholders. The company said it made the move after hearing from “multiple parties” interested in either the entire company or Warner Bros.
Keeping the market in check were drops for some Big Tech stocks, which lost momentum following their own rallies. A 1.8 per cent drop for Google parent Alphabet from its all-time high was among the heaviest weights on the S&P 500. Broadcom fell 2.1 per cent.
Other big recent winners in financial markets also took a pause. The price of gold fell 5.4 per cent from its latest record, dropping back to $US4125.80 per ounce. It’s still up 56.2 per cent for the year so far.
