NEW YORK - Higher earnings from energy and chemical companies nudged the stock market up Thursday.
The modest move extends a pattern seen this week: Even with plenty of earnings news from big companies, the broader market has shuttled between minor gains and minor losses.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 4.31 points, or 0.3 percent, to close at 1,690.25.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 13.37 points, or 0.01 percent, to 15,555.61. The Dow was held back by Home Depot and Caterpillar, which warned of sagging sales on Wednesday.
The Nasdaq composite index rose 25.59 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,605.19.
Rising and falling stocks were evenly split on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated volume was very light at 1.9 billion shares.
Cabot Oil & Gas and Range Resources reported revenue and earnings that trumped estimates, sending their stocks up 7 percent. Cabot climbed $4.85 to $76.56. Range Resources rose $5.34 to $81.39.
Facebook soared 30 percent after reporting earnings late Wednesday that easily beat analysts’ forecasts thanks to higher revenue from ads on mobile devices. Facebook’s stock gained $7.85 to $34.36.
Nearly halfway through the season for reports on second-quarter earnings, the overall trend looks good but not great, said Tyler Vernon, chief investment officer of Biltmore Capital in Princeton, N.J. “There have been some big disappointments, like Caterpillar [Wednesday], but we’re seeing better and better numbers coming out.”
Analysts forecast that companies in the S&P 500 index will report earnings growth of 4.3 percent over last year, according to S&P Capital IQ. At the start of July, the forecast was for growth of 2.8 percent. More than six out of every 10 companies have cleared analysts’ earnings targets so far.
Eventually, improving profits should help push the S&P 500 index above 1,700 in the coming weeks, Vernon said.
D.R. Horton, the country’s largest builder, and PulteGroup said orders for new houses jumped in the second quarter, but their results still fell short of what analysts had expected. PulteGroup also posted a 14 percent decline in profits.
D.R. Horton shares dropped $1.82, or 9 percent, to $19.38. PulteGroup lost $2.29, or 12.4 percent, to $16.16, the biggest drop in the S&P 500.
“Housing is taking it on the chin,” said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago. “I think what you’re seeing a bit of today is people questioning what higher mortgage rates mean for housing.”
In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note was unchanged from late Wednesday at 2.59 percent. Late last week, it was trading at 2.48percent.
The Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks set another record high, gaining 10.35 points, or 1 percent, to 1,054.18. The Russell has trounced other indexes this year, gaining 24 percent versus 19 percent for the S&P 500 and the Dow.
Business, Pages 28 on 07/26/2013