Tag Archives: SRCHEN

Business

Spotify to trim 6% of workforce in latest tech layoffs

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Jan 23 (Reuters) – Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.

The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to shed thousands of jobs.

“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.

“I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months.

Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.

Reuters Graphics

At the same time, businesses pulled back on ad spending on the platform, mirroring a trend seen at Meta and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), as rapid interest rate hikes and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war pressured the economy.

The company, whose shares rose 5.8% to $103.55, is now restructuring itself in a bid to cut costs and adjust to the deteriorating economic picture.

It said Dawn Ostroff, the head of content and advertising, was leaving after an over four-year stint at the company. Ostroff helped shape Spotify’s podcast business and guided it through backlash around Joe Rogan’s show for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

The company said it is appointing Alex Norström, head of the freemium business, and research and development boss Gustav Söderström as co-presidents.

Spotify had about 9,800 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.

($1 = 0.9196 euros)

Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Shailesh Kuber

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Exclusive: Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers in latest blow to tech sector

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Jan 20 (Reuters) – Google’s parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is eliminating about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, the company said Friday, in the latest cuts to shake the technology sector.

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, said in a staff memo shared with Reuters that the company had rapidly expanded headcount in recent years “for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

“I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” he said.

The cuts come days after rival Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said it would lay off 10,000 workers.

Alphabet’s job losses affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams.

The layoffs are global and impact U.S. staff immediately.

Alphabet has already emailed affected employees, the memo said, while the process will take longer in other countries due to local employment laws and practices.

The news comes during a period of economic uncertainty as well as technological promise, in which Google and Microsoft have been investing in a burgeoning area of software known as generative artificial intelligence.

“I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI,” Pichai said in the note.

Reuters was first to report the news.

Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Davos, Switzerland; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Alexander Smith

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

U.S. stocks drop on recession fears, Nasdaq closes at new bear market low

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  • Tesla gains 3.3% in choppy trade
  • Southwest Airlines slips 5.2% on government scrutiny
  • Indexes down: Dow 1.1%, S&P 500 1.20%, Nasdaq 1.35%

Dec 28 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes ended weaker on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq hitting a 2022 closing low, as investors grappled with mixed economic data, rising COVID cases in China, and geopolitical tensions heading into 2023.

The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) ended at 10,213.288, the lowest since the bear market began in November 2021 after the index hit a record high. The last time the Nasdaq ended lower was in July 2020. Its previous closing low for 2022 was 10,321.388 on Oct. 14.

“There was no Santa rally this year. The Grinch showed up this December for investors,” said Greg Bassuk, chief executive at AXS Investments in Port Chester, New York.

December is typically a strong month for equities, with a rally in the week after Christmas. The S&P 500 index (.SPX) has posted only 18 Decembers with losses since 1950, Truist Advisory Services data show.

“Normally a Santa Claus Rally is sparked by hopes of factors that will drive economic and market growth,” Bassuk said. “The negative and mixed economic data, greater concerns around COVID reemergence and ongoing geopolitical tensions and … all of that also translating Fed policy is all impeding Santa (from) showing up at the end of this year.”

All 11 of the S&P 500 (.SPX) sector indexes fell on Wednesday. Energy stocks (.SPNY) were the biggest losers, dipping over 2.2% as worries over demand in China weighed on oil prices.

Investors have been assessing China’s move to reopen its COVID-battered economy as infections surged.

“With this current combination of rising cases with an opening up of China restrictions, we’re seeing that investors are concerned that the ramifications are going to spread through many different industries and sectors as it did in the earlier COVID period,” Bassuk said.

The benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) is down 20% year-to-date, on track for its biggest annual loss since the financial crisis of 2008. The rout has been more severe for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), which closed at the lowest level since July 2020.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

While recent data pointing to an easing in inflationary pressures has bolstered hopes of smaller interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, a tight labor market and resilient American economy have spurred worries that rates could stay higher for longer.

Markets are now pricing in 69% odds of a 25-basis point rate hike at the U.S. central bank’s February meeting and see rates peaking at 4.94% in the first half of next year. .

Shares of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) gained 3.3% in choppy trade, a day after hitting the lowest level in more than two years. The stock is down nearly 69% for the year.

Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) dropped 5.2% a day after the carrier came under fire from the U.S. government for canceling thousands of flights.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) fell between 1.5% and 3.1% as the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield recovered from a brief fall to rise for a third straight session.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 365.85 points, or 1.1%, to 32,875.71; the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 46.03 points, or 1.20%, at 3,783.22; and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 139.94 points, or 1.35%, to 10,213.29.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a 3.77-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.97-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted seven new 52-week highs and seven new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 75 new highs and 421 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 8.59 billion shares, compared with the 11.3 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by Amruta Khandekar and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Anil D’Silva and Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Microsoft to buy 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

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Dec 12 (Reuters) – Microsoft (MSFT.O) is to take a 4% equity stake in London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG.L) as part of a 10-year commercial deal to migrate the exchange operator’s data platform into the cloud, the British company said on Monday.

It is the latest sign of deepening ties between financial services providers and a handful of big global cloud companies such as Microsoft, Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and IBM (IBM.N), which have prompted regulators to scrutinise the ties more closely.

Microsoft has longstanding links with LSEG, but the exchange group’s Chief Executive David Schwimmer said that about a year ago they began talks on closer ties.

“It’s a long term partnership. In terms of the products we will be building together, I would expect our customers to start to see the benefits of that 18 to 24 months out and we will continue building from there,” Schwimmer told Reuters.

Regulators have expressed concern about the over-reliance of financial firms on too few cloud providers, given the disruption this could cause across the sector if a provider went down.

The European Union has just approved a law introducing safeguards on cloud providers in financial services, with Britain set to follow suit.

“You should assume we do not like to surprise our regulators,” Schwimmer said, when asked if LSEG has ensured that regulators were on board.

LSEG said the link with Microsoft was a partnership to reap the benefits of “consumption-based pricing”, and not a traditional cloud deal.

“We will continue to maintain our multi-cloud strategy and working with other cloud providers,” Schwimmer said.

The deal was not about savings by outsourcing activities to the cloud, but about meaningful incremental revenue growth as new products come on stream over time.

“This feels like a key milestone in LSEG’s journey towards being information solutions-centric, even if ‘meaningful’ revenue growth specifics are lacking,” analysts at Jefferies said.

As part of the deal, LSEG has made a contractual commitment for minimum cloud-related spend with Microsoft of $2.8 billion over the term of the partnership.

Microsoft said the basis of the partnership will be the digital transformation of LSEG’s technology infrastructure and Refinitiv platforms on to the Microsoft Cloud.

“The initial focus will be on delivering interoperability between LSEG Workspace and Microsoft Teams, Excel and PowerPoint with other Microsoft applications and a new version of LSEG’s Workspace,” the U.S. company said.

LSEG shares were up 4% in early trade.

LSEG bought Refinitiv for $27 billion from a Blackstone and Thomson Reuters’ consortium, which turned the exchange into the second largest financial data company after Bloomberg LP.

LSEG has made “good progress” on its programme for the delivery of its cloud-based data platform since the completion of its Refinitiv acquisition in January 2021, it said in a statement.

Microsoft will buy LSEG shares from the Blackstone (BX.N)/Thomson Reuters (TRI.TO), Consortium, the exchange operator said.

Thomson Reuters, which owns Reuters News, has a minority shareholding in LSEG following the Refinitiv deal.

Microsoft’s purchase is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2023.

Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Google must remove ‘manifestly inaccurate’ data, EU top court says

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LUXEMBOURG, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Alphabet unit Google (GOOGL.O) must remove data from online search results if users can prove it is inaccurate, Europe’s top court said on Thursday.

Free speech advocates and supporters of privacy rights have clashed in recent years over people’s “right to be forgotten” online, meaning that they should be able to remove their digital traces from the internet.

The case before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerned two executives from a group of investment companies who had asked Google to remove search results linking their names to certain articles criticising the group’s investment model.

They also wanted Google to remove thumbnail photos of them from search results. The company rejected the requests, saying it did not know whether the information in the articles was accurate or not.

A German court subsequently sought advice from the CJEU on the balance between the right to be forgotten and the right to freedom of expression and information.

“The operator of a search engine must de-reference information found in the referenced content where the person requesting de-referencing proves that such information is manifestly inaccurate,” the Court of Justice of the European Union said.

The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

To avoid an excessive burden on users, judges said such proof does not have to come from a judicial decision against website publishers and that users only have to provide evidence that can reasonably be required of them to find.

Google said the links and thumbnails in question were no longer available through web search and image search and that the content had been offline for a long time.

“Since 2014, we’ve worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between people’s rights of access to information and privacy,” a spokesperson said.

The same court in 2014 enshrined the right to be forgotten, saying that people could ask search engines like Google to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results appearing under searches for their names.

The judgment preceded landmark EU privacy rules that went into effect in 2018 and state that the right to be forgotten is excluded where the processing of personal data is necessary for the exercise of the right of information.

The case is C-460/20 Google (Déréférencement d’un contenu prétendument inexact).

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris; editing by Barbara Lewis, Robert Birsel

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Business

Pentagon splits $9 billion cloud contract among Google, Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft

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Dec 7 (Reuters) – The Pentagon awarded $9 billion worth of cloud computing contracts to Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon Web Services Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Oracle Corp on Wednesday.

The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) is the multi-cloud successor to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which was an IT modernization project to build a large, common commercial cloud for the Department of Defense.

The separate contracts, which carry a notional top line of $9 billion, run until 2028 and will provide the Department of Defense with enterprise-wide, globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, the contract announcement said.

U.S. flag hangs during a ceremony to honor victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., September 11, 2022. REUTERS/Cheriss May

U.S. Navy Commander Jessica McNulty, a Department of Defense spokesperson, said in a statement the JWCC was a multiple-award procurement composed of four contracts with a shared ceiling of $9 billion.

The move comes months after the Pentagon had delayed its decision to award an enterprise-wide JWCC contract.

The Pentagon attempted to move to the cloud several years ago using the JEDI concept, but the proposal died after litigation stopped the procurement process.

This deal could put the military more in line with private-sector companies, many of whom split up their cloud computing work among multiple vendors.

Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru and Mike Stone in Washington D.C.; Editing by Stephen Coates and Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

S&P 500 ends down as Apple dips and traders eye Powell speech

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  • Investors look to Powell speech for interest rate clues
  • U.S. consumer confidence slips in November
  • S&P 500 -0.16%, Nasdaq -0.59%, Dow +0.01%

Nov 29 (Reuters) – The S&P 500 ended down on Tuesday, with losses in Apple and Amazon ahead of an upcoming speech by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that could provide hints about magnitude of future interest rate hikes.

Investors also focused on recent protests against COVID-19 curbs in China, including at the world’s biggest iPhone factory.

Apple’s (AAPL.O) stock dropped 2.1%, down for a fourth straight session.

Powell is due to speak at a Brookings Institution event on Wednesday about the outlook for the U.S. economy and the labor market. Investors will be looking for clues about when the Fed will slow the pace of its aggressive interest rate hikes.

“No one is willing to buy ahead of tomorrow with Powell speaking. Everyone is nervous about what he is going to say,” said Ron Saba, senior portfolio manager at Horizon Investments in Charlotte.

Shares of Amazon (AMZN.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O) and Tesla (TSLA.O) each lost more than 1%.

The benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) is headed for its second straight month of gains in November amid bets that recent inflation readings showing a slight cooling in prices will lead the Fed to scale back the scale of its interest rate hikes.

The Fed has delivered four straight 75 basis point rate hikes, and it is expected to shift down the pace to a 50-bps move in December. FEDWATCH

A survey on Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence eased further in November amid persistent worries about the rising cost of living.

A specialist trader works with his son during a traditional bring-your-kids-to-work day on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Mainland China’s recent wave of civil disobedience comes as the number of COVID cases hit record daily highs and large parts of several cities face new lockdowns, further threatening the world’s second largest economy.

The S&P 500 energy sector index (.SPNY) rallied 1.3%, while gains in oil prices on expectations of a loosening of China’s strict COVID controls were later offset by concerns that OPEC+ would keep its output unchanged at its upcoming meeting.

The S&P 500 declined 0.16% to end the session at 3,957.60 points.

The Nasdaq declined 0.59% to 10,983.78 points, while Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.01% to 33,852.13 points.

Despite the S&P 500’s decline, advancing issues outnumbered falling ones (.AD.SPX) by a 1.3-to-one ratio.

The S&P 500 posted three new highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 68 new highs and 183 new lows.

U.S.-listed shares of Chinese companies Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , Pinduoduo Inc (PDD.O) and JD.com Inc jumped more than 5% after China broadened equity financing channels for property developers.

Shares of Chinese internet firm Bilibili Inc soared 22% after posting upbeat quarterly results.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was relatively light, with 9.6 billion shares traded, compared with an average of 11.2 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions.

Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru and by Noel Randewich in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Shounak Dasgupta

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Google to pay nearly $400 million to settle U.S. location-tracking probe

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WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) will pay $391.5 million to settle allegations by 40 states that the search and advertising giant illegally tracked users’ locations, the Michigan attorney general’s office said Monday.

The investigation and settlement, which was led by Oregon and Nebraska, is a sign of mounting legal headaches for the tech giant from state attorneys general who have aggressively targeted the firm’s user tracking practices in recent months.

In addition to the payment, Google must be more transparent with consumers about when location tracking is occurring and give users detailed information about location-tracking data on a special web page, the Iowa attorney general’s office said.

“When consumers make the decision to not share location data on their devices, they should be able to trust that a company will no longer track their every move,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “This settlement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and abide by state and federal privacy laws.”

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said: “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”

Google said in a blog post on Monday that it would be “making updates in the coming months to provide even greater controls and transparency over location data.”

Those changes include making it easier to delete location data. New users will have auto-delete controls that allow them to order Google to delete certain information when it hits a certain age.

The state attorneys opened a probe in 2018 following a report that Google recorded location data even when users instruct it not to. The probe found that Google had misled consumers about location-tracking practices since at least 2014, in violation of state consumer protection laws.

Arizona filed a similar case against Google and settled it for $85 million in October 2022.

Texas, Indiana, Washington State and the District of Columbia sued Google in January over what they called deceptive location-tracking practices that invade users’ privacy.

Google had revenue of $111 billion from advertising in the first half of this year, more than any other seller of online ads. A consumer’s location is key to helping an advertiser cut through the digital clutter to make the ad more relevant and grab the consumer’s attention.

Writing by Diane Bartz and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Anna Driver and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Diane Bartz

Thomson Reuters

Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.

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Business

Elon Musk says ‘I have too much work on my plate’

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NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he was working “at the absolute most amount…from morning til night, seven days a week” when asked about his recent acquisition of Twitter and his leadership of automaker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O).

“I have too much work on my plate that is for sure,” Musk said by videolink to a business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.

Musk is chief executive of both companies and also runs rocket firm SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company. Wearing a batik shirt sent by the organizers, he appeared on screen lit by candles, explaining that he was speaking from a place that had just lost power.

Tesla investors worry that Musk, a self-confessed “nanomanager” who has been personally involved in working-level decisions from car styling to supply chain issues, is distracted at a critical time for the world’s largest electric vehicle maker.

Tesla’s shares have halved in value since early April, when he disclosed he had taken a stake in Twitter. His Tesla share sales, including another $4 billion last week to bring his Twitter-related sales to $20 billion, have added to the pressure.

When asked about the complexity of industrial supply chains “decoupling” from China and the risks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Musk returned to how busy he was.

Responding to an observation that many business leaders in Asia wanted to be the “Elon Musk of the East,” Musk said: “I’d be careful what you wish for. I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same thing as actually being me. The amount that I torture myself is next level, frankly.”

Musk also said he wanted to see Twitter support more video and longer-form video so that content creators could make a living on the platform, but did not provide details. His remarks were streamed live on Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube.

Indonesia has been trying to secure a deal with Tesla on battery investment and potentially one for SpaceX to develop a rocket launch site.

Musk made no commitment to either of those but said Indonesia had a large role to play in the electric vehicle supply chain and that it would make sense “long term” for SpaceX to have multiple launch points around the globe.

It was not clear where Musk was during the Bali event. His personal jet has remained in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s headquarters since the weekend, according to @ElonJet, a Twitter account that tracks Musk’s Gulfstream G650.

“I’m just looking at this video and it’s so bizarre,” Musk said. “I’m sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles.”

Musk added he believed that the economy would make the transition to sustainable energy, adding it was “just a question of how long it takes.” He said space exploration should remain a priority “so we can understand the nature of the universe and our place in it.”

“Maybe we’ll find alien civilization or discover civilizations that existed millions of years ago, but we see the ruins of ancient civilizations. I think that would be incredibly interesting,” he said.

Reporting by Leika Kihara; Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Wall St down for fourth straight day on Fed rate hike worry

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  • U.S. initial weekly jobless claims fall
  • Services industry growth slows
  • Qualcomm, Roku slump on weak forecasts
  • Dow down 0.46%, S&P 500 down 1.06%, Nasdaq down 1.73%

NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks closed lower for a fourth consecutive session on Thursday as economic data did little to alter expectations the Federal Reserve would continue raising interest rates for longer than previously thought.

Following the Federal Reserve’s statement on Wednesday, comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell that it was “very premature” to be thinking about pausing its rate hikes sent stocks lower as U.S. bond yields and the U.S. dollar rose, a pattern that extended into Thursday.

Economic data on Thursday showed a labor market that continues to stay strong, although a separate report showed growth in the services sector slowed in October, keeping the Fed on its aggressive interest rate hike path.

Jobless claims and Challenger Gray

“Years ago the Fed’s job was to take away the punch bowl and that balance is always a very difficult transition, you want the economy to slow to keep inflation from getting out of hand but you want enough earnings to support stock prices,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.

“It is about the rate of change as much as the change so when the rate of change starts to slow … that almost becomes a positive even though in absolute terms we are going to continue to see higher rates, and higher rates means more competition for stocks and lower multiples.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 146.51 points, or 0.46%, to 32,001.25, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 39.8 points, or 1.06%, to 3,719.89 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 181.86 points, or 1.73%, to 10,342.94.

While traders are roughly evenly split between the odds of a 50 basis-point and 75 basis-point rate hike in December, the peak Fed funds rate is seen climbing to at least 5%, compared with a prior view of a rise to the 4.50%-4.75% range.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., October 14, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Investors will closely eye the nonfarm payrolls report due on Friday for signs the Fed’s rate hikes are beginning to have a notable impact on slowing the economy.

The climb in yields weighed on megacap growth companies such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O), down 4.24%, and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), which lost 4.07% and pulled down the technology (.SPLRCT) and communication services (.SPLRCL) sectors as the worst-performing on the session.

Losses were curbed on the Dow thanks to gains in industrials including Boeing Co (BA.N), which rose 6.34%, and a 2.20% climb in heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N).

Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) and Roku Inc (ROKU.O) shed 7.66% and 4.57%, respectively, after their holiday quarter forecasts fell below expectations. read more

With roughly 80% of S&P 500 companies having reported earnings, the expected growth rate is 4.7%, according to Refinitiv data, up slightly from the 4.5% at the start of October.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.81 billion shares, compared with the 11.63 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.75-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.50-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 6 new 52-week highs and 46 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 77 new highs and 291 new lows.

Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak in New York
Editing by Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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