Investing.com – Wall Street traded lower on Wednesday amid a sell-off in crude and a slew of earnings as the second quarter reporting season winds down.
At 15:36GMT or 11:36AM ET, the Dow 30 lost 41 points, or 0.22%, the S&P 500 fell 8 points, or 0.35%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite traded down 28 points or 0.54%.
Eyes were mostly on oil on Wednesday as crude showed choppy trade. Prices responded to the upside after weekly U.S. inventories showed an impressive draw on gasoline stockpiles that seemed to overcome a surprise build in crude inventories.
But the bullish sentiment didn’t last and oil prices quickly tumbled more than 1%.
U.S. crude futures lost 1.68% to $42.05 by 15:38GMT, or 11:38AM ET, while Brent oil fell 1.67% to $44.23.
Earlier in the session, the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) lifted its forecast for global demand for oil in 2016.
OPEC said that world oil demand growth this year was expected to average 1.22 million barrels per day (mb/d), 30,000 barrels higher than its previous estimate.
As second quarter earnings season comes to a close this week, 447 of the S&P 500 companies, or 70%, had beaten earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Earnings being priced in on Wednesday largely followed the trend with Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) trading 2% higher on a wave of positive analyst recommendations after the company's third quarter earnings and revenue beat.
Among big movers, shares of Yelp (NYSE:YELP) spiked nearly 14% as the consumer review website operator swung to an unexpected second quarter profit and raised its full-year revenue forecast.
Ralph Lauren (NYSE:RL) jumped more than 10% on a top and bottom line beat.
The session wasn’t without major casualties on the earnings front as SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR) crashed 30% after swinging to a loss and cutting its full-year revenue forecast.
Perrigo Co (NYSE:PRGO) and The Wendy’s Co (NASDAQ:WEN) were also down 10% and 3%, respectively, after releasing their own quarterly earnings.
With no major market movers on the economic front, the U.S. Labor Department said that the number of job openings, excluding the farming industry, increased to 5.624 million in June from 5.514 million a month earlier.
Analysts had expected the number of job openings to rise to just 5.574 million.