(MENAFN- AFP) Wall Street shares headed mostly lower in early trade Thursday even as the US economy turned in a much stronger than expected performance in the third quarter.
It took an 8.2 percent surge in Visa shares, driven by its strong quarterly earnings report, to hold the Dow Jones Industrial Average in positive territory.
About an hour into trade, the Dow was up 93.55 points (0.55 percent) at 17,067.86.
Meanwhile the broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.24 (0.06 percent) to 1,981.06, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite lost 15.36 (0.34 percent) at 4,533.87.
The official first estimate of third-quarter US growth came in at a peppy 3.5 percent, more good news on the economy a day after the Federal Reserve expressed greater optimism about the state of the jobs market.
But that fed some worries that the central bank could hike interest rates earlier than the mid-2015 target that it has signaled up to now.
Credit card giant Visa propped up the blue-chip index on the back of a nine percent gain in fiscal fourth-quarter revenues to $3.23 billion and a 17 percent rise in earnings per share, to $2.18, both handily beating forecasts.
Visa shares jumped 8.2 percent to $232.16.
Most of the rest of the Dow blue chips were lower, led by Microsoft (-1.4 percent) and Intel (-2.3 percent).
Facebook continued its fall on expectations of slower growth as the company ramps up research spending; shares were off 2.6 percent.
Israeli generic pharmaceuticals maker Teva added 1.7 percent on a 23 percent earnings gain, and Chinese Internet search engine Baidu surged 3.5 percent as it reported a 52 percent increase in third-quarter revenues.
Bond prices were higher. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell to 2.29 percent from 2.32 percent Wednesday, while the 30-year dipped to 3.02 percent from 3.05 percent. Bond yields and prices move inversely.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.