Wall Street dips in premarket but remains near record highs as another raft of earnings pours in
Wall Street dipped in premarket trading Tuesday, but indexes remained near record highs on another big day for corporate earnings reports.
Futures for the S&P 500 lost 0.1 per cent before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq were each off 0.2 per cent.
Homebuilders were the early winners, with D.R. Horton climbing nearly seven per cent after easily surpassing Wall Street's third-quarter sales and profit expectations. PulteGroup also topped analysts' forecasts, rising 1.7 per cent, while Lennar rode the wave of optimism and was up 2.1 per cent.
General Motors shed 3.6 per cent in the early going after the automaker reported that its profit and revenue declined from the previous quarter. GM maintained its full-year guidance from May, however that forecast was cut as the company braced for a potential impact from auto tariffs as high as US$5 billion in 2025.
Shares of Coca-Cola Co. were largely unchanged after the soda giant beat Wall Street profit expectations but fell a tad short on revenue projections. Coke said that its pricing rose six per cent for the April-June period, making up for the one per cent decline in case volumes both globally and in North America.
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Germany's DAX lost 1.1 per cent, the CAC 40 in Paris gave up 0.9 per cent and Britain's FTSE 100 was nearly unchanged.
In Asian trading, Japan's benchmark surged and then fell back as it reopened from a holiday Monday following the ruling coalition's loss of its upper house majority in Sunday's election.
The Nikkei 225 shed 0.1 per cent to 39,774.92.
Analysts said the market initially climbed as investors were relieved that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to stay in office despite the setback. But the election's outcome has added to political uncertainty and left his government without the heft needed to push through legislation.
A breakthrough in trade talks with the U.S. might win Ishiba a reprieve, but so far there's been scant sign of progress in negotiating away the threat of higher tariffs on Japan's exports to the U.S. beginning Aug. 1.
'Relief may be fleeting. Ishiba's claim to leadership now rests on political duct tape, and history isn't on his side. The last three LDP leaders who lost the upper house didn't last two months,' Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
Elsewhere, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.5 per cent to 25,130.03, while the Shanghai Composite index advanced 0.6 per cent to 3,581.86.
South Korea's Kospi sank 1.3 per cent to 3,169.94, with investors concerned over next week's deadline for making a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump or facing 25 per cent tariffs on all the country's exports to the U.S.
Many of Trump's stiff proposed tariffs are paused after he extended the deadline to Aug. 1 to allow more time to reach potential trade deals that could lower those rates.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 0.1 per cent to 8,677.20. India's Sensex was flat.
In Thailand, the SET sank 1.1 per cent after the government named Vitai Ratanakorn as the new future governor of the central bank. He is viewed as likely to be less independent than the current governor, raising concerns about the bank's independence, analysts said.
In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 61 cents to $65.34 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 65 cents to $68.56 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar inched up to 147.40 Japanese yen from 147.38 yen. The euro gained to $1.1701 from $1.1696.
By Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott
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