By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher on Wednesday after strong earnings from Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and signs of economic recovery implicit in other earnings reports bolstered sentiment.
Goldman and JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) both blew past expectations for profit in the three months through June, but their stocks diverged amid concern that JPMorgan's, at least, relied heavily one-off factors. Goldman stock rose 2.7% while JPMorgan stock fell 1.3%. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) stock also inched down as both its numbers and JPMorgan's hinted at relatively weak demand for retail banking services such as auto and consumer loans. Data released earlier also showed that mortgage applications fell for the 9th week in 10 last week, although the weekly decline slowed to only 3.9%.
By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 119 points, or 0.4%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were both up 0.1%. All three indices go into the new earnings season at or near to record highs, on expectations of a strong rebound in the economy this year and continued policy support.
Attention was focused on the market debut of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which is going public through a direct listing at a reference price of $250. The stock was informally bid at anything up to $1000 on some brokerage platforms ahead of trading, but most interest was reported around$ $500-$600. The reference price alone would value Coinbase more highly than the London Stock Exchange Group (LON:LSEG) and almost as much as Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE).
The listing had mixed effects on other stocks that have been viewed as indirect proxies for cryptocurrencies. MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) stock fell 5.8% and is now down over 30% from its January peak, while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), which converted $1.5 billion of its treasury balance into Bitcoin earlier this year, was up 0.5% at a two-month high.
Not all the earnings news was positive - Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY), touted for much of last year as a turnaround stock, fell over 14% after reporting a double-digit decline in fiscal fourth-quarter sales, with all the company’s stores shut during the pandemic.
Stitch Fix (NASDAQ:SFIX) also extended Tuesday's losses in reaction to the news that founder Katrina Lake will step down as CEO in August. The stock fell 3.4%.
Elsewhere, Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock gained another 3.9% while BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) stock rose 0.6% to a new all-time high as the makers of Covid-19 vaccines continued to profit from the misfortunes of rivals. The European Commission said it has opened talks with Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech for another 1.8 billion doses of their vaccine.