Stocks ended mixed Friday as investors looked for guidance about the economy from a range of company results, and from the meeting of the finance officials for the Group of 20 nations in South Korea.»
At that meeting, the Obama administration urged the world’s biggest economies to set a numerical limit on their trade imbalances, in an effort to broker an international consensus on how to handle festering exchange-rate tensions. China, whose currency battle with the United States has threatened to derail global economic cooperation, did not formally weigh in on the plan.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 14.01 points, or 0.1 percent, at 11,132.56. On Thursday, the Dow had ended at its highest level since May 3, despite wavering through the day.
The Nasdaq composite index rose 19.72 points, or 0.8 percent, at 2,479.39 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 2.82 points, or 0.2 percent, at 1,183.08. While the three indexes rose less than 1 percent in the week, they closed at weekly highs not seen since April.
Corporate earnings have helped lift shares this week despite uncertainty from an interest rate increase by China earlier in the week. Howard Silverblatt, the senior index analyst for Standard & Poor’s indexes, said on Friday that more than 85 percent of the 151 companies listed on the S.& P. that had reported so far had beaten their 2009 earnings per share as of Thursday’s close.
But he added that company guidance and expected earnings were more important for continued momentum, because of their implications for increases in production and employment.
“Earnings are good, but it is all from cuts,” he said. “We have not grown business that much.”
The results and forward-looking guidance from a range of telecommunications, manufacturing, oil industry and financial companies reports were absorbed by investors on Friday.
Verizon said its third-quarter profit declined 25 percent in the third quarter, citing pension settlements resulting from layoffs and voluntary departures. But its operating revenue, while falling to $26.5 billion from $27.3 billion in the same quarter a year ago, was slightly ahead of analysts’ forecasts of $26.3 billion.
Still, Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said in a statement that the company was “building momentum” and “on track” to reach its goal of growing earnings in the second half of the year.
Verizon’s share price was down 1.32 percent at $32.09.
Honeywell, which makes plane engines and other products, said that its third-quarter earnings fell but that revenue was higher; the company revised upward its forecast for the year. Its share closed at $47.26, up 1.26 percent.
The oil services company Schlumberger reported third-quarter revenue of $6.85 billion, up from the previous year’s $5.43 billion; its net income rose 11 percent year on year. The company said that it expected the fourth quarter to show continued strong activity in North America on land, but that it did not expect any “rapid return” to deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Its share price rose more than 5 percent, to $67.77.
American Express said on Thursday that its profit rose as losses related to bad loans tapered off. Shares were down 3 percent at $39.03.
Financial shares have been struggling to overcome the fallout from the continuing foreclosure crisis.
The dollar index closed little changed.
The 10-year Treasury note declined 3/32, to 100 19/32, while the yield remained unchanged at 2.55 percent.
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