By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened mixed on Thursday, with investors refusing to be carried away by data showing the economy grew at a record pace in the third quarter as it rebounded from the Covid-19 lockdowns of spring.
By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 212 points, or 0.8%, at 26,308 points, extending the losses of Wednesday, which was its worst day in four months. The S&P 500 was down 0.3% while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3%, ahead of a big day for tech earnings. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter are all due to report later.
Earlier, the Commerce Department had said that gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 33.1% in the third quarter, somewhat above forecasts but still not enough to bring GDP back to its pre--pandemic level. The number of initial jobless claims last week, meanwhile, fell by more than expected, but pointed to a continued high rate of layoffs at 751,000.
Elsewhere, pending home sales data confirmed a weakening in housing market trends in September, falling 2.2% on the month. New home sales had also weakened from multiyear highs earlier in the week.
Among the early gainers was Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) stock, which rose 31% after the social media company posted strong revenue and user growth in its third-quarter earnings, helped by an increase in spend from advertisers that boycotted Facebook throughout the summer.
Less dramatic but also impressive was Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) stock, which rose 1.2% after the telecommunications conglomerate beat expectations for subscriber growth both in its high-speed internet service and its new Peacock streaming service.
However, tech stocks which failed to live up to elevated expectations were punished harder than usual against a backdrop of nagging concerns about valuations. eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) stock fell 9.0% after reporting a sharp slowdown in gross merchandise value growth on its marketplace, and Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) stock fell 8.6% after reporting a wider-than-expected loss for the quarter (despite adding more subscribers than it had guided for).
Peloton Interactive (NASDAQ:PTON) and Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM), two stocks that have generally outperformed as restrictions on social and economic life have been tightened, also fell 2.4% and 4.4%, respectively.