Stock market today: Wall Street adds to its hot start to the week in early trading

FILE – The “Fearless Girl” statue stands in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, March 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher Tuesday and adding to their hot start to the week.

The S&P 500 was up 0.4% in early trading to pull further out of the hole created by a six-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 81 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.

A flood of earnings reports is dictating trading. GE Aerospace climbed 2.9% after reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. General Motors revved up by 4% after topping forecasts thanks to sales of pickup trucks and other higher-profit vehicles. Kimberly-Clark gained 7% after the maker of Huggies, Kleenex and Kotex reported better-than-expected profit for the first quarter and raised its earnings forecast for the full year.

They helped overshadow a 5.2% drop for Nucor after the steelmaker fell short of forecasts for both profit and revenue. MSCI, whose investment indexes guide much of the industry, fell 10% after reporting weaker revenue growth than expected.

Sherwin Williams sank 3.5% after it likewise missed expectations, in part because of weaker paint sales for new homes amid the industry’s challenges with high mortgage rates.

JetBlue Airways lost 12.2% despite topping expectations for the latest quarter. Its forecasts for upcoming revenue came up short of what some analysts expected. Other airlines also weakened, including a 3.4% fall for American Airlines.

The market’s main event may be arriving after trading ends for the day. That’s when Tesla will become the first of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks that accounted for most of last year’s gains for the S&P 500 to reports its first-quarter results. Expectations are high after the small handful of stocks rocketed to big gains in 2023, and they’ll need to at least match them to justify their prices.

With skeptics still calling the broad stock market too expensive, only companies producing higher profits or interest rates falling would ease the criticism. The latter looks less likely.

Top officials at the Federal Reserve warned last week they may need to keep interest rates high for a while in order to ensure inflation is heading down to their 2% target. That was a big letdown for financial markets, dousing hopes that had built after the Fed signaled earlier that three interest-rate cuts may come this year.

Lower rates had appeared to be on the horizon after inflation cooled sharply last year. But a string of reports this year showing inflation has remained hotter than expected has raised worries about stalled progress.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.63% from 4.61% late Monday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were rising across much of Europe. They were mixed earlier in Asia. Stocks jumped 1.9% in Hong Kong but fell 0.7% in Shanghai.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.