Stock market today: Wall Street leans towards gains, Disney plunges after Q2 loss | National News

Wall Street swung between gains and losses before Tuesday's opening bell as more corporate earnings arrived in what was otherwise expected to be a relatively quiet week.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose less than 0.1%.

Disney fell more than 6% in premarket trading after the company posted a second-quarter loss weighed down by restructuring costs and other charges. Adjusted for these costs, Disney beat Wall Street's earnings per share expectations but fell short of sales targets.

Tesla relented after federal road safety investigators asked the electric car maker to tell them how and why it developed the solution as part of a recall of more than 2 million vehicles equipped with the company's Autopilot semi-automated driving system. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tesla has reported 20 accidents since the fix – an online software update – was sent out in December. The company's shares lost 1.8% premarket and have fallen more than 25% this year.

According to FactSet, this week is relatively quiet as most companies in the S&P 500 have already reported earnings for the first three months of the year and more than three-quarters of them have beaten earnings expectations.

According to strategists at Deutsche Bank, corporate earnings reports were better than expected not only in the US, but also in Europe and Japan. After four straight declines, global earnings growth is on track for a second straight quarter of growth.

The US stock market has fluctuated between gains and losses since the record high at the end of March. It failed for weeks because of fears that stubbornly high inflation would prevent, or at least delay, the Federal Reserve from making the interest rate cuts that Wall Street is demanding.

However, things rebounded at the end of last week after the jobs report came in weaker than expected, suggesting the U.S. economy was strong enough to avoid a severe recession without spiking inflation.

Traders are betting on a nearly 89 percent chance that the Fed will cut interest rates at least once before the end of the year, according to data from CME Group. This is an increase from the 81.6% probability observed a week earlier. Lower interest rates would help ease pressure on the economy and financial system.

In Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 1% at midday, Germany's DAX was up 0.6% and the CAC 40 in Paris was up 0.4%.

In Asian trading, the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo rose 1.6% to 38,835.10. The rise was led by semiconductor companies such as Tokyo Electron, which closed 4.8% higher, and Advantest, which rose 2.2%.

South Korea's Kospi rose 2.2% to 2,734.36, helped by major technology companies such as Samsung Electronics, which posted a 4.8% gain, and smaller rival SK Hynix, which rose 3.7%.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.5% to 18,4779.37. But the Shanghai Composite Index recovered from early losses, rising 0.2% to 3,147.74.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.4% to 7,793.30 after the central bank decided to keep interest rates unchanged at 4.35%.

Taiwan's Taiex rose 0.6% while India's Sensex lost 0.5% as the country began the third phase of its week-long national election process.

In other trading, benchmark U.S. crude oil lost 34 cents to $78.14 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Monday it rose 37 cents.

Brent crude, the international standard, was down 32 cents, falling to $82.98 a barrel.

The dollar rose to 154.39 Japanese yen from 153.90 yen. The euro remained stable at $1.0769.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 1% and the Dow Industrials gained 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.2%.

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