U.S. stocks decline amid rising Treasury yield, earnings

NEW YORK, April 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks traded lower for the week as investors were monitoring the bond market as well as a batch of corporate earnings.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.62 percent, 0.01 percent and 0.37 percent respectively.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield broke above 3 percent for the first time since 2014 on Tuesday. All three indexes suffered great losses during the day, with the Dow once plunging over 550 points.

The yield, a barometer for mortgage rates and other financial instruments, has jumped in April on signs of rising inflation, which sparked market speculation for more rate-hikes later this year.

Analysts said investors also worried that the climbing borrowing costs may slow the economy. A move in the yield above 2.9 percent earlier this year sparked a correction for U.S. equities.

Meanwhile, Wall Street also paid a close attention to the corporate earnings reports.

U.S. social media company Facebook reported first-quarter earnings and revenue that beat market expectations after the closing bell on Wednesday. Shares of the company closed 9.2 percent higher on Thursday.

Other tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft also posted better-than-forecast earnings during the week.

So far, the earnings season has been overall positive. Of the S&P 500 companies that have reported, 79.4 percent have posted better-than-forecast earnings, according to latest data from U.S. research firm FactSet.

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 are expected to rise by 20 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to increase by 7.5 percent.

On the U.S. economic front, the Labor Department reported on Thursday that in the week ending April 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 209,000, a decrease of 24,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for initial claims since December 6, 1969 when it was 202,000.

Moreover, U.S. gross domestic product(GDP) increased at a 2.3 percent annual rate for the first quarter of 2018, beating market consensus of a 2-percent gain, but lower than the 2.9-percent growth rate in the previous quarter, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Enditem