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Nasdaq closes at record high amid earnings, data

Xinhua, May 16, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Nasdaq closed at record high on Tuesday, as Wall Street mainly digested Home Depot's better-than-expected quarterly results and newly-released economic data.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average inched down 2.19 points, or 0.01 percent, to 20,979.75. The S&P 500 lost 1.65 points, or 0.07 percent, to 2,400.67. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 20.20 points, or 0.33 percent, to 6,169.87.

Before Tuesday's opening bell, Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, reported sales of 23.9 billion U.S. dollars for the first quarter of fiscal 2017, a 4.9 percent increase from the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

Net earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 were 2.0 billion dollars, or 1.67 dollars per diluted share, compared with net earnings of 1.8 billion dollars, or 1.44 dollars per diluted share, in the same period of fiscal 2016.

This earnings season has been strong so far. The latest data from Thomson Reuters showed that the S&P 500 companies' blended earnings in the first quarter of 2017 are expected to rise 14.7 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to increase 7.2 percent.

On the economic front, U.S. industrial production advanced one percent in April, the largest monthly gain since February 2014 and topping market estimates, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday.

U.S. privately-owned housing starts in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,172,000, well below market expectation, according to U.S. Census Bureau Tuesday. This is 2.6 percent below the revised March estimate of 1,203,000, but is 0.7 percent above the April 2016 rate of 1,164,000.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at record highs on Monday as Wall Street cheered over soaring oil prices. Enditem