Stock market today: Wall Street ticks higher as a torrent of earnings reports begins

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher Tuesday as earnings reporting season ramps up for big companies.

The S&P 500 was up 0.3% in midday trading and on track for a second straight gain after breaking a three-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 95 points, or 0.2%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Dozens of companies are reporting their results for the spring on Tuesday, with a couple highly influential Big Tech companies coming after trading ends for the day in Alphabet and Tesla. Expectations are generally high, and analysts are forecasting the strongest profit growth for S&P 500 companies since late 2021, according to FactSet.

GE Aerospace thrust 7.4% higher after beating analysts’ forecasts for profit in the spring and raising its forecast for earnings over the full year. It was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.

Danaher rose 7.1% after likewise reporting better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, in part because of strength at its Cepheid molecular testing business.

Sherwin-Williams climbed 5.1% after also delivering stronger profit than expected. It said it’s seeing growth in demand for paint from new residential customers, and it expects the momentum to continue through the year.

Through its customers, the paint and coatings company has been feeling the pain of high interest rates meant to get inflation under control. High mortgage rates have chilled the housing industry, for example, and a report on Tuesday showed sales of previously occupied homes weakened by even more in June than economists expected. Sales slowed in part because prices for previously occupied homes are at the highest ever recorded, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Easier times may be ahead for rates. With inflation slowing, the wide expectation on Wall Street is for the Federal Reserve to begin lowering its main interest rate in September. That would offer some relief for both the economy and financial markets after the Fed has held the federal funds rate at the highest level in more than two decades.

Treasury yields have sunk since the spring on such expectations, and they ticked a bit lower again on Tuesday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.22% from 4.25% late Monday.

Hopes for coming cuts to interest rates have helped smaller stocks bounce in particular. They can get bigger benefits from lower interest rates than their bigger rivals, and the Russell 2000 of smaller stocks rose a market-leading 1%. It’s a turnaround after smaller companies had lagged the biggest stocks, headlined by a small group known as the “Magnificent Seven,” for a while.

Analysts see it as an encouraging signal when more stocks are participating in a rising market, rather than just a few dominant elites.

On the losing end of Wall Street, UPS tumbled 13.2% after delivering weaker profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected. But CEO Carol Tomé said the company’s U.S. business delivered more packages than a year earlier, its first such growth in nine quarters, and called it a “significant turning point for our company.”

Comcast dropped 3.9% after reporting revenue for the spring that fell short of expectations. Its biggest declines came from lower attendance at its U.S. theme parks and from its studios business, which didn’t have as big hits as last year’s “The Super Mario Bros.” and “Fast X” movies.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Asia and Europe.

Chinese markets were some of the weakest, and stocks fell 0.9% in Hong Kong and 1.6% in Shanghai. Analysts described moves by China’s central bank to cut two key interest rates on Monday as not particularly inspiring.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.