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NEW YORK - Wall Street shares ended mixed Thursday in choppy trade as earnings season continued apace with the Bank of America disclosing its latest profits fell a sharp 32 percent, largely due to investment losses.
Stocks dipped in morning deals after Bank of America, the nation's second-largest banking firm, said its third-quarter net profit slowed to 3.7 billion dollars from a year ago, in part due to bad bets on mortgage-backed securities.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 3.58 points (0.03 percent) at 13,888.96.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite ended up 6.64 points (0.24 percent) at 2,799.31 while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index finished 1.16 points (0.08 percent) lower at 1,540.08.
"Bank of America reported third-quarter earnings that trailed estimates by a wide margin," said Al Goldman, a chief market strategist at AG Edwards.
The bank unveiled earnings per share of 82 cents. Wall Street had anticipated earnings per share of 1.05 dollars.
"The best that can be said about this report is that it is the last of the large banks that is expected to have a third-quarter earnings problem as a result of the sub-prime mortgage mess," said Dick Green, a market analyst and president at Briefing.com.
The banking sector is reeling from its exposure to sub-prime loans, or home loans granted to Americans with stretched finances, and ailing mortgage-backed securities.
Bank of America's shares closed down 2.3 percent at 48.85 dollars.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer meanwhile said its third-quarter profit slipped 77 percent from a year ago to 761 million dollars amid a big write-off linked to the withdrawal of its Exubera diabetes drug.
The world's biggest pharmaceutical group, maker of blockbusters like Lipitor to lower cholesterol and the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, said it took a charge of 2.8 billion dollars to exit Exubera, an inhaled insulin product.
But excluding one-time gains and losses, Pfizer's earnings per share of 58 cents beat most Wall Street forecasts. Its stock ended down one cent at 24.54 dollars.
World oil prices, which have pressured stocks in recent days, scaled fresh record peaks amid tensions between Turkey's government and Kurdish rebels located in northern Iraq.
New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, jumped 2.07 dollars to a record close of 89.47 dollars a barrel.
On the economic front, a forward-looking gauge of US economic activity rebounded in September, pointing to "slow but steady" growth, according to the Conference Board.
The business research group said its index of leading economic indicators, a gauge of activity in the coming six to nine months, increased 0.3 percent to a reading of 137.9 after a revised fall of 0.8 percent in August.
"While the financial markets gyrated and the slump in housing intensified, the economy continued to perform at a slow but steady pace," said Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein.
And Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced over 1,200 job losses in the United States after its third-quarter results weakened on sharper competition from generic drugs.
Novartis's US-listed shares finished up 0.7 percent at 53.29 dollars.
After the market close, Internet giant Google announced better-than-expected results as profits jumped 45 percent to 1.07 billion dollars amid surging online advertising revenues.
Bond prices rose as the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond eased to 4.503 percent from 4.546 percent Wednesday and that on the 30-year bond declined to 4.779 percent from 4.809 percent.
Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
- AFP /ls
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