Stocks narrowly mixed on earnings reports

Wall Street waffled through an uninspired session Tuesday, leaving stocks narrowly mixed despite solid results from Johnson & Johnson and several banking companies as investors waited for Intel Corp.’s earnings report.

After the close of regular trading, Intel announced earnings that were in line with Wall Street expectations, but the company’s sales were at the low end of Intel’s previous outlook and slightly less than analysts had forecast.

Despite the negativity surrounding earnings — investment firm Merrill Lynch & Co. missed its earnings estimates Tuesday — some analysts saw reasons for hope.

“I think some of the earnings expectations have been lowered over the past few weeks, and that’ll be built into prices,” said Doug Sandler, chief equity strategist at Wachovia Securities. “That does give us some room to the upside of this trading range we’re stuck in should earnings come in strong.”

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 9.37, or 0.1 percent, to 10,247.59.

Broader stock indicators were narrowly mixed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 0.79, or 0.1 percent, to 1,115.14, and the Nasdaq composite index was down 5.26, or 0.3 percent, at 1,931.66.

The Commerce Department’s latest report on the nation’s trade deficit gave the market a lift. The trade deficit narrowed to $46 billion in May, dropping 4.5 percent from April’s all-time high. U.S. exports had their best month on record, the department said, helped in part by a weaker dollar.

However, investor focus remained with earnings and, in particular, companies’ outlooks for the second half of the year, which call for slower growth rates. Add that to concerns over terrorism, election year politics and ever-present interest rate concerns, and investors “are going to be sitting on their hands,” said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at First Albany Corp.

Advancing issues barely outnumbered decliners on the NYSE, where preliminary consolidated volume came to 1.49 billion shares, compared to 1.36 billion on Monday.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was up 0.45, or 0.1 percent, at 562.69.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.2 percent. In Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 closed down 0.1 percent, France’s CAC-40 rose 0.1 percent for the session, and Germany’s DAX index gained 0.3 percent.