Wall Street made seesaw movement and capped mixed on July 8, as a rally in health-care and consumer companies helped snuff out an earlier slide spurred by the concern that second-quarter earnings will disappoint investors.
Alcoa Inc. will kick off the earnings season after Wednesday's closing bell as the first company in the Dow average to report results. Investors hope that the company can provide some guidance about the economy.
Analysts expect Alcoa to post a second-quarter loss of 38 cents per share and estimate profits at S&P 500 companies fell by an average 34 percent in the second quarter.
An increasing number of disappointing economic reports have put brakes on the spring rally of the equity market since mid-June. Investors worried that the world economy may take longer to emerge from recession than originally hoped and put their buying on hold recently. Therefore, the market is eagerly watching companies' expectation about business conditions for the rest of the year.
Crude oil continued to tumble on Wednesday amid economic uncertainties. Light Sweet Crude dipped to 60.14 U.S dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Exxon Mobil led a gauge of energy shares down.
Major indexes pared early losses and the Dow closed higher, as health-care and consumer companies perked up after the U.S. government announced a successful auction of 10-year notes and the decline of consumer credit slowed in May.
The Dow Jones added 14.81, or 0.18 percent, to 8,178.41. Broader indexes moved mixed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.47, or 0.17 percent, to 879.56, and the Nasdaq rose 1.00, or 0.06 percent, to 1,747.17.