US: Dow, S&P 500 dip amid volatility in US stocks

[NEW YORK] Wall Street stocks mostly fell early Thursday despite a batch of strong earnings from Twitter and others as markets struggled to shrug off the volatility of the last week.

About five minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4 per cent to 24,795.98.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.2 per cent to 2,676.46, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index edged up less than 0.1 per cent to 7,054.61.

US markets have been under pressure all week, with the Dow notching its biggest loss ever in terms of points on Monday, rallying on Tuesday and finishing modestly lower Wednesday after a morning rally fizzled in the closing moments of trading.

Wednesday's last-minute tumble "underscored the lack of conviction that still exists in the market, which is a byproduct of the market's stunning behavior since last Friday," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare.

Among individual names, Twitter surged 25.8 per cent after it reported its first ever profit. San Francisco-based Twitter said it earned US$91 million in the fourth quarter, the first positive net income since going public in 2013.

AFP