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1st LD Writethru: U.S. stocks plunge into red territory after volatile trading

Xinhua, January 14, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. stocks slashed big early gains to turn lower Tuesday despite upbeat data, extending losses for a third straight day.

Buoyed by the good start of the fourth-quarter earnings season, the market initially surged in the morning session, with the Dow soaring as much as 282 points, before the three benchmark indices dived into negative territory in the afternoon trading and ended mildly lower, as falling oil prices continued to haunt the market.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 27.16 points, or 0.15 percent, to 17,613.68. The S&P 500 slipped 5.23 points, or 0.26 percent, to 2,023.03. The Nasdaq Composite Index edged down 3.21 points, or 0.07 percent, to 4,661.50.

Aluminum giant Alcoa Inc. released strong quarterly results after Monday's closing bell to unofficially kick off the earnings season.

Alcoa said it swung to profit in the fourth quarter of last year as transformation strengthened profitability. The company posted adjusted earnings of 33 cents per share for the past quarter, as revenue jumped 14 percent from a year ago to 6.4 billion U.S. dollars, topping market estimates.

Some major U.S. banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc., will also release their quarterly results this week.

According to Thomson Reuters, the fourth-quarter earnings of S& P 500 companies are expected to grow 3.7 percent year on year.

Economic data came in positive. The National Federation of Independent Business said Tuesday that U.S. small business optimism perked up in December, with the Small Business Optimism Index rising 2.3 points to 100.4, the best reading since October 2006.

U.S. job openings registered 4.97 million in November, higher than October's reading of 4.83 million, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

The continued slide in oil prices weighed on investor sentiment. Both Brent crude and U.S. crude dipped to near six-year lows Tuesday, with no sign of production cut from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

U.S. equities had witnessed big swings recently, as investors were growing restless on plunging oil prices which had sunk about 54 percent from its recent peak in June 2014, posing uncertainties on the global economy. Endite