Investing.com – Wall Street was muted on Wednesday, as investors digested results from Boeing and Caterpillar just a day after the S&P and Nasdaq reached record highs.
The S&P 500 fell 3 points or 0.1% by 9:50 AM ET (13:50 GMT), while the Dow was down 31 points or 0.1% and tech-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 11 points or 0.1%.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) inched up 0.7% on relief that there were no disappointments besides what was already expected in its first-quarter repprt. The company suffered a 21% fall in profit during the first-quarter due to the worldwide grounding of its 737 Max after two deadly crashes. It said it expects an initial financial hit of $1 billion.
Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) fell 2.2% after posting a 4% decline in construction revenue in Asia-Pacific, while AT&T (NYSE:T) slipped 3.5% on a revenue miss.
"Thus far you've had pretty strong reactions to earnings and investor sentiment is nervously positive," said Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.
"The nervousness has to do with valuations and the concern being, 'Am I going to get good enough results and guidance to justify the markets going higher?'"
Elsewhere, Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC) rose 11.2% after Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) launched a hostile bid at $76 a share, 17% above what Chevron (NYSE:CVX) had offered for the company. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) inched up 0.3%, while eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) jumped 4.1% and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) was up 1.5%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.1% to $1,274.15 a troy ounce, while crude oil fell 0.1% to $66.27, ending two consecutive days of gains. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.1% to 97.433.
-Reuters contributed to this report.