Reports impact on trade

US stock investors struggled at midday yesterday to sort through a bevy of earnings reports from influential blue chip and technology companies, ahead of highly-anticipated after-the-bell reports from IBM and Microsoft.

Around 11:35am ET the Dow Jones industrial average was up 35.10 to 8758.28, and the S&P 500 index, up 2.44 to 920.66, edged fractionally higher, while the Nasdaq composite was down 1.99 to 1436.81.

“We’re in this listless trading period right now,” said John Hughes, market analyst at Shields & Co. “You’ve got a lot of companies that have met or have beaten reduced estimates, but there’s no real surprise in that. What you’re not seeing are these big companies saying, going forward, business looks good, orders are picking up, we see a turnaround. Until we get some sort of upside surprise like that, we’re probably going to stay rangebound.