U.S. stocks close mixed ahead of earnings reports

NEW YORK, April 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks ended mixed on Monday as investors were awaiting for a string of corporate earnings reports due out later this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased 14.25 points, or 0.06 percent, to 24,448.69. The S&P 500 added 0.15 points, or 0.01 percent, to 2,670.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 17.52 points, or 0.25 percent, to 7,128.60.

Wall Street was bracing for the busiest week of the earnings season. More than 170 companies are expected to have released their quarterly results by the end of the week, including Alphabet, 3M and Amazon.

Expectations for this earnings season are high. The latest data from Thomson Reuters showed that the S&P 500 companies' blended earnings in the first quarter of 2018 are expected to rise by 20 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to increase by 7.5 percent.

So far, the earnings season is off to a good start. More than 82 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported through Monday have topped earnings estimates, according to U.S. research firm FactSet.

Meanwhile, traders paid a close attention to the rising Treasury yield. The 10-year Treasury note yield on Thursday broke above 2.9 percent, a level that sparked a correction in the U.S. stock market earlier this year, and on Monday it hit 2.99 percent, the highest level since 2014.

Last week, all three major indexes posted moderate gains, with the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq up 0.4 percent, 0.5 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively. Enditem