Reuters Dow, Nasdaq squeeze out gains before Alcoa results

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and the Nasdaq eked out gains on Wednesday as a late-stage rally brought stocks off their lows on hopes that the quarterly earnings season would deliver good news.

Despite the rebound from steeper losses earlier in the day, a negative tone still characterized trade as investors worried whether an economic recovery would take hold.

After the market close, however, aluminum giant Alcoa Inc (AA.N) reported a smaller-than-expected loss that gave a positive tone to the start of the second-quarter earnings season. Its shares jumped 7 percent to $10.07 in extended trading.

"My own sense of it is that manufacturing companies should do a lot better in the third-quarter simply because the inventory liquidation we saw in the first half of the year was huge, it was absolutely huge," said Charles Lieberman, chief investment officer of Advisors Capital Management, LLC in Paramus, New Jersey, after Alcoa reported.

Stocks were sharply lower for most of the day as investors worried that an economic recovery will be slower than thought. Those fears helped send crude oil futures to a more than a six-week low, while copper, a barometer for global demand, hit a two-week low as commodities sold off across the board.

"The tone of the trading day definitely was to the downside," said Weston Boone, vice president of listed trading at Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets in Baltimore.

He pointed to a deterioration in sentiment over the last few day after U.S. June payrolls data came in worse than expected at the end of last week.

Kevin Kruszenski, head of listed trading at KeyBanc Capital Markets in Cleveland, noted that a late rally may have been triggered by people "jockeying for position" ahead of Alcoa's earnings.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI gained 14.81 points, or 0.18 percent, to 8,178.41. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX dropped 1.47 points, or 0.17 percent, to 879.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC added 1.00 points, or 0.06 percent, to 1,747.17. more...

Reuters Dow, S and P dip on Chrysler bankruptcy, MetLife off late

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and S&P 500 fell on Thursday after Chrysler's bankruptcy filing undercut optimism about upbeat corporate profits and reassuring job market data.

Even so, the S&P 500 closed out its best month in nine years despite the big U.S. automaker's bankruptcy after talks to restructure its debt broke down.

Uneasiness about Chrysler's bankruptcy wiped out earlier gains of more than 1 percent in both the Dow industrials and the S&P 500.

"We've got some fairly heavy-handed government intervention here, and the market is concerned about that," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

Exxon Mobil Corp was the top drag on the Dow, down 2.6 percent at $66.67, after the world's largest publicly traded company posted a 58 percent drop in quarterly profit that missed Wall Street's estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 17.61 points, or 0.22 percent, to 8,168.12. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dipped just 0.83 of a point, or 0.09 percent, to 872.81.

But the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 5.36 points, or 0.31 percent, to 1,717.30.

FINANCIALS RANK AS TOP SECTOR IN APRIL

For the month of April, the Dow rose 7.4 percent, the S&P 500 gained 9.4 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 12.4 percent.

The gains for the broad S&P were the largest since March 2000, while the Nasdaq scored its biggest percentage rise since October 2002.

The best-performing sectors in the S&P 500 for the month were financials, up 22 percent, and consumer discretionary stocks, up 18.5 percent. more...