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* Facebook jumps after upbeat quarterly revenue
* Tesla jumps after reporting profitable quarter
* U.S. weekly jobless claims remain elevated
* McDonald's dips as quarterly profit slides
* Indexes down: Dow 1.42%, S&P 500 1.21%, Nasdaq 0.66%
(Adds comments, updates to early afternoon)
By C Nivedita and Shreyashi Sanyal
April 30 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes fell on
Thursday after a strong month of gains as millions of more
Americans applied for jobless claims, taking the shine off a
strong rally this month and eclipsing upbeat results from
Facebook and Tesla.
All 11 S&P 500 sector indexes were trading lower, with
financials .SPSY , materials .SPLRCM and utilities .SPLRCU
leading declines.
Dramatic U.S. stimulus and hopes of a revival in business
activity as states reopen from lockdowns have powered a Wall
Street rally in April, putting the S&P 500 .SPX and Dow Jones
index .DJI on course for their best months since 1987.
But investors remain cautious of the pace of the recovery
from a looming recession, with economic indicators underlining
the extent of the damage already done.
The Labor Department's report showed initial jobless claims
totaled 3.84 million for the week ended April 25, a day after
data confirmed the biggest contraction for the U.S. economy in
the first quarter since the Great Recession. "The jobless claims figure is a kind of feedback from some
of the policy that we've undertaken as a country to fight (the
crisis), but hopefully a lot of these jobless folk will come
back into the workforce," said Matt Stucky, portfolio manager at
Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
"The timing of when that happens is going to be a function
of the road to recovery from the coronavirus."
The U.S. Federal Reserve widened a key program to nurse the
"Main Street" economy, agreeing to lend to even larger firms,
taking on more risk in participation with banks. Investors will now focus on earnings reports from Apple
AAPL.O and Amazon.com AMZN.O after markets close.
Facebook Inc FB.O jumped 5% after the social media giant
posted better-than-expected quarterly revenue. Market-leading growth stocks such as, Facebook, Apple,
Amazon.com, Netflix NFLX.O and Alphabet GOOGL.O , the
so-called FAANG group, have gained between 12% and 25% this
month.
"The stock market has largely been driven by a lot of these
disruptive tech-names in past years, so many investors are
looking to these names to come and lead us out of the downtown,"
said Chris Andrews, co-founder and co-portfolio manager at
SilverCross Investment Management in Amsterdam.
At 12:56 p.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was
down 349.46 points, or 1.42%, at 24,284.40, the S&P 500 .SPX
was down 35.64 points, or 1.21%, at 2,903.87 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC was down 59.22 points, or 0.66%, at 8,855.49.
Electric-car maker Tesla Inc TSLA.O gained 2% after
posting its third straight quarterly profit, taking investors by
surprise as its automaker peers were hit by a slump in consumer
demand and factory shutdowns. McDonald's Corp MCD.N shed 2% after it reported a 16.7%
slide in quarterly profit as most of its restaurants across the
globe limited their services to deliveries and take-aways.
American Airlines AAL.O fell 3.7% as the airline operator
posted its first quarterly loss since emerging from bankruptcy
in 2013 and warned of a $70 million a day cash burn.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 3.17-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and nearly the same on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded two new 52-week highs and no new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded 18 new highs and two new lows.