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 US automaker's bankruptcy after talks to restructure its debt broke down.
Uneasiness about Chrysler's bankruptcy wiped out earlier gains of more than 1% 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% at $US66.67, after the world's largest publicly traded company posted a 58% drop in quarterly profit that missed Wall Street's estimates.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 17.61 points, or 0.2%, to 8,168.12. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dipped just 0.83 of a point, or 0.1%, to 872.81. But the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 5.36 points, or 0.3%, to 1,717.30.
Australian markets may be mixed. In recent trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the SPI 200 futures
index was up 11 points at 3,777. Yesterday, the benchmark
S&P/ASX200 share index closed at a high for the year, gaining 85.2
points, or 2.3%, to 3780.5, while the broader All Ordinaries lifted
82.8 points, or 2.3%, to 3744.7.
Resource stocks may gain, with the Reuters/Jefferies CRB index of commodity prices up 0.6% overnight.
The Australian dollar eased back overnight. It was recently buying 72.6
US cents, down from yesterday's local close of 73.36 US cents. It was
also changing hands at 49.1 pence, 54.9 euro cents and 71.6 yen.
Monthly gains
For the month of April, the Dow rose 7.4%, the S&P 500 gained 9.4% and the Nasdaq jumped 12.4%.
The gains for the broad S&P were the largest since March 2000, while the Nasdaq scored its biggest percentage rise since October 2002.
Although worrisome for the overall economy, Chrysler's Chapter 11 filing lifted its rivals' shares. General Motors rose 6.1% to $US1.92, while Ford Motor advanced 9.7% to $US5.98.
The S&P 500 is up 29% from the bear-market closing low set on March 9. Stocks have been bolstered in part by optimism over the state of the banking sector and hopes the recession is easing.
The broad S&P received substantial support from profit reports from companies like Dow Chemical, up 18.4% at $US16 as its earnings handily beat estimates.
However, shares of Motorola fell 7.2% to $US5.53 despite posting a narrower-than-expected loss as the cellphone maker also announced its cash position fell about $US1 billion in the last three months.
Shares of big-cap technology companies lifted the Nasdaq, along with green module manufacturer First Solar Inc, which jumped 23.5% to $US187.29 after the company posted better-than-expected results.
Of the 280 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date, 65% topped analysts' estimates, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.
However, many of the analysts' estimates had been reduced to reflect the current economic slump.
The latest government data showed the number of workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, even as the number of people staying on those benefits rose to a fresh record high.
Trading was active on the New York Stock Exchange, with about 1.74 billion shares changing hands, above last year's estimated daily average of 1.49 billion, while on Nasdaq, about 2.81 billion shares traded, above last year's daily average of 2.28 billion.
Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,672 to 1,373 while on the Nasdaq, the trend was reversed: decliners beat advancers on the Nasdaq by about 1,360 to 1,335.
Reuters
