Retail earnings news gives stocks a boost
NEW YORK - Encouraging earnings news from major retailers and the Walt Disney Co. drew investors back into the stock market one day after a big drop.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 73 points yesterday after dropping 94 on Thursday.
Upbeat quarterly reports from Disney as well as from Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and J.C. Penney Co. offset worries about a slide in consumer confidence.
Disney said late Thursday that higher revenue at its cable, broadcast, and movie studio divisions helped drive profits up 18 percent. Abercrombie's results were better than expected, and J.C. Penney raised its income and sales forecasts.
The market stumbled briefly in morning trading after a report found that the mood of consumers darkened this month. The preliminary Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for November came in at 66.0, down from 70.6 in October. That could bode poorly for the holiday shopping season.
Stocks rebounded after that report but later pared their gains as the dollar pulled off its lows of the day. The dollar's steady slide since March, due largely to record-low U.S. interest rates, has pushed stocks and commodities higher on hopes that it would help U.S. exports, which become cheaper overseas with the weak dollar.
The Dow rose 73, or 0.7 percent, to 10,270.47.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 6.24, or 0.6 percent, to 1,093.48. The Nasdaq composite index rose 18.86, or 0.9 percent, to 2,167.88.
Traders will gather fresh insight next week with a government report due Monday on retail sales in October as well as quarterly earnings reports from Gap Inc., Home Depot Inc., Saks Inc., and Target Corp.
The latest batch of earnings reports gave some hope yesterday. Disney rose $1.39, or 4.8 percent, to $30.44 and posted the biggest advance of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials.
Abercrombie jumped $3.92, or 10.7 percent, to $40.68, while J.C. Penney gained $1.82, or 6.2 percent, to $31.21.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 5.96, or 1 percent, to 586.28.
Britain's FTSE 100 and Germany's DAX index rose 0.4 percent, while France's CAC-40 lost 0.1 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average slipped 0.4 percent.
