Investing.com – Nasdaq surged on Thursday after upbeat tech earnings from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), but other indices remained flat after lackluster results from bellwether companies on Wednesday.
The Dow was down 23 points or 0.1% by 9:49 AM ET (13:49 GMT), while the S&P 500 was up nearly 5 points or 0.2% and the NASDAQ Composite jumped 48 points or 0.6%.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) jumped 1.7% after its cloud computing services forecast was better than expected, while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) gained 16.8% on a surprise profit. PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) rose 9.3% after it raised its full-year outlook, with payment volume coming in above forecasts.
The outlier was social media company Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), which slumped 18% after posting disappointing third-quarter results. 3M (NYSE:MMM) was also down, dipping 4% after it cut its full-year profit forecast.
Of the 124 S&P 500 companies that reported results up to Wednesday, more than 82% topped earnings estimates, according to Refinitiv data. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Visa (NYSE:V) are expected to report after the close.
Meanwhile trade remained in focus, after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the phase-one trade deal between Washington and Beijing would include much of an agreement scrapped in May around intellectual property. Earlier in the session, Bloomberg reported that China was willing to buy as much as $20 billion of American agricultural products in one year. That's still less than it bought in 2016.
In commodities, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.1% to 97.325 and gold futures gained 0.4% to $1,501.30 a troy ounce. Crude oil futures were flat at $56.02 a barrel.
-Reuters contributed to this report