By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 was close to unchanged in afternoon trading Friday as bank and other financial shares were mixed following their quarterly reports, offsetting gains in UnitedHealth Group and other health insurer stocks.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo <WFC.N> were little changed. Both reported higher quarterly profits, but said they have set aside more money for expected losses from commercial real estate loans. The S&P 500 banks index was last down 0.9%.
UnitedHealth Group shares were up 8%, giving the S&P 500 and Dow their biggest boosts, while the healthcare sector was the biggest positive in the S&P 500. Humana was up 2.8% and Cigna was up 4.7%.
UnitedHealth’s quarterly profit beat analysts’ expectations, thanks to lower-than-feared expenses.
“We’ve rallied significantly year to date, and that was in anticipation of better-than-expected earnings,” said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president and advisor for Wealthspire Advisors in Westport, Connecticut.
“What we’re seeing now and are likely to continue to see through the end of the summer is a little bit of fatigue and lack of conviction that stocks can go materially higher.”
The day’s quaressentiallyrts essentialy kicked off the second-quarter U.S. reporting period. Analysts expect S&P 500 earnings to have declined 8.1% in the quarter from a year ago, according to Refintiiv data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 127.96 points, or 0.37%, to 34,523.1, the S&P 500 lost 2.32 points, or 0.05%, to 4,507.72 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 20.26 points, or 0.14%, to 14,118.31.
Indexes remained on track for solid weekly gains, with the S&P 500 up more than 17% for the year so far.
Among other financial company reports, Citigroup shares were down 3.4% after the lender’s quarterly profit tumbled, while BlackRock was down 1.3% after it posted a decline in quarterly revenue.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.61-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.26-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 39 new 52-week highs and 4 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 87 new highs and 52 new lows.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Johann M Cherian and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Sriraj Kalluvila, Maju Samuel, Vinay Dwivedi and David Gregorio)
