Joystiq has you covered with all things Metal Gear Solid 4!

AOL Money & Finance

Before the bell: Earnings have soured mood again

Stock futures indicated a higher start earlier this morning following solid results from internet bellwether Yahoo late Tuesday. As earnings reports have started coming out this morning, though, stock futures have started to reverse direction.

Other than many earnings reports on tap today, investors may look at U.S. oil inventories when out later today after reaching nearly $120 a barrel (10 cents shy) Tuesday. Analysts expect supplies declined in the past week. So far oil has moved somewhat lower today, but remained near $118 a barrel.

U.S. stocks tumbled Tuesday following some disappointing results from several tech and consumer stocks. The Dow industrials dropped 104 points, or 0.82%, the S&P 500 fell 12 points, or 0.88%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 31 points, or 1.29%.

Despite many upcoming earnings reports, investors will likely continue to focus on Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), which has reported strong results, beating analyst estimates on both the top line and bottom line. Still, the results weren't phenomenal, or uncovered any surprising issue that might show it could fare better on its own. Yahoo! has until Saturday to accept Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s takeover offer of $31 a share or face a proxy fight. Microsoft has already said it wouldn't raise its offer, but of course, nothing is certain at the moment. YHOO shares are down about 0.8% in premarket trading.

Reporting today are Boeing (NYSE: BA), Delta (NYSE: DAL), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), Anheuser Busch (NYSE: BUD) and UPS (NYSE: UPS) before the markets open.

After the close, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) are scheduled to post results.

Ambac (NYSE: ABK), the second-largest bond insurer which has captured may headlines lately following record losses and threats from credit companies to trim its ratings, posted a wider loss -- an operating loss of $6.93 a share -- than analysts estimated ($1.82 per share) after taking $3.1 billion in charges for subprime-mortgage securities. ABK shares are down about 8.8% in premarket trading.

Related Posts

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.

New Users

Current Users

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+73.0311,288.54
NASDAQ-6.082,245.38
S&P 500+1.381,262.90

Last updated: July 06, 2008: 07:17 AM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

BloggingStocks Featured Video

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

AOL Business News

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

Sponsored Links

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

Weblogs, Inc. Network