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NEW YORK: US stocks edged higher in choppy trading on Wednesday after two days of declines as jittery investors appeared to hedge against possibly a tough corporate earnings reporting season.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 47.55 points (0.61 percent) to end at 7,837.11 after criss-crossing between positive and negative territory on relatively low share turnover.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 29.05 points (1.86 percent) to 1,590.66 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 9.61 points (1.18 percent) to 825.16.
The market remained cautious after the sell-off the past two days, with stocks looking for direction after early gains were challenged by a bout of selling pressure, traders said.
"Sellers threatened to drag stocks lower for the third straight session, but buyers showed resolve and pushed all three of the major indices higher," Briefing.com said.
"As earnings reports come out over the next two weeks, there is the possibility of an improved market tone if the guidance from companies is not too bad," it said.
An uninspiring earnings report from aluminium giant Alcoa, which kicked off the first-quarter financial results season after the market closed on Tuesday, reinforced jitters over the fate of companies reeling from recession.
Alcoa, a Dow component, suffered a hefty 497-million-dollar net loss, its second consecutive quarterly loss and slightly higher than most analysts expected.
In looking at the short term, Wachovia Securities chief market strategist Al Goldman said the market would closely gauge "forward statements" of chief executives as quarterly earnings were released.
"We would guess that most will be cautious and hopefully not too pessimistic about the rest of the year. Poor first-quarter earnings are widely anticipated - negative forward comments are probably not."
The market on Wednesday also factored in proposals by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to curb short-selling of stocks blamed for collapsing the shares of Wall Street firms last year amid financial turmoil.
The market-regulating SEC is considering five proposals to restrict investors from betting on a stock's decline at specific times, officials said.
The proposals, backed by some financial institutions and other companies that suffered sharp declines in their shares, will be subject to public comment for 60 days, they said.
Among rising stocks on Wednesday was insurance-linked Lincoln Financial, which shot up 32.80 percent to 9.15 dollars.
The US Treasury Department said on Wednesday life insurers owning banks were eligible for a bailout programme for financial institutions reeling from a prolonged recession.
It reiterated their eligibility under the 700-billion-dollar Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), after The Wall Street Journal reported that life insurers have been added as a third industry, along with banks and auto companies, eligible for government bailout money.
Bank of America fell 4.08 percent to 7.06 dollars after the Journal reported that the bank's chief executive Kenneth Lewis had signalled he could leave the bank as soon as the current crisis is over - "definitely plans to depart within three years."
The bond market rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond fell to 2.847 percent from 2.909 percent on Tuesday and that on the 30-year bond to 3.659 percent from 3.729 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions. - AFP/de
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