Investing.com – Wall Street was mostly flat on Wednesday as investors digest a flurry of earnings releases.
The S&P 500 was up five points or 0.19 % to 2,711.58 as of 9:42 AM ET (13:42 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 11 points or 0.05% to 24,798.22 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite rose nearly three points or 0.04% to 7,284.02.
The latest batch of first quarter earnings results slightly bolstered investor confidence, but optimism was held back by geopolitical tensions.
Shares in Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) rose 1.86% after the company reported a 40% increase in quarter profit. United Continental Holdings Inc (NYSE:UAL) was up 2.72% after reporting a rise in profit, while CSX (NASDAQ:CSX) jumped 5.43% after the railroad operator beat analyst expectations.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 0.23% while eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) jumped 4.63% after Morgan Stanley increased its target price of the e-commerce firm.
Elsewhere IBM (NYSE:IBM) slumped 6.25% after the firm reported lower than expected earnings results. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) lost 1.48% while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) inched down 0.56% and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) fell 1.06%.
Meanwhile Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director and U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week.
In Europe stocks were mostly up. Germany’s DAX fell 17 points or 0.14% while in France the CAC 40 increased 14 points or 0.27% and in London, the FTSE 100 was up 82 points or 1.14%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 gained three points or 0.10% while Spain’s IBEX 35 inched up 51 points or 0.52%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.54% to $1,356.80 a troy ounce while crude oil futures increased 2.10% to $67.92 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.01% to 89.21.