US stocks gain on mostly solid earnings

NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks finished modestly higher Thursday following a batch of mostly solid corporate earnings and a successful market debut of technology company Pinterest.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.4 percent to 26,559.54.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.2 percent at 2,905.03, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index edged up less than 0.1 percent to 7,998.06.

Following some better-than-expected results, analysts now project that companies in the S&P 500 will report a 2.3 percent decline in earnings-per-share in the first quarter, a bit better than the 2.7 percent drop seen on the eve of the reporting season, according to CFRA Research.

"There were lowered expectations of profitability, so businesses are doing a little better than expected," said Brian Battle, a director at Performance Trust Capital Partners.

"The market has rallied a really long way," he added. "We need more good news to push higher from here."

Several companies gained following earnings, including American Express, Honeywell International and Union Pacific, while Alcoa and Schlumberger retreated.

US retail sales rose 1.6 percent in March to $514.1 billion, thanks in part to especially robust auto sales. Analysts had expected an increase of 0.9 percent.

The San Francisco-based visual discovery service Pinterest surged nearly 30 percent in its first session after an initial public offering raised $1.4 billion.

Videoconferencing startup Zoom shot up 72.2 percent after its IPO raised more than $350 million.