U.S. stocks ended mildly higher Tuesday, with the Nasdaq refreshing its record highs, as Wall Street pondered over a batch of earnings reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 3.76 points, or 0.02 percent, to 18,533.05. The S&P 500 rose 0.85 point, or 0.04 percent, to 2,181.74. The Nasdaq Composite Index increased 12.34 points, or 0.24 percent, to 5,225.48.
With no major economic report due Tuesday, investors shifted their focus from the U.S. Federal Reserve to corporate earnings reports. After Monday's closing bell, Resolute Energy Corp., a U.S. oil and gas company, said its losses narrowed in the second quarter of 2016. Its shares spiked 16.89 percent to 9.76 U.S. dollars apiece Tuesday.
Shares of Coach Inc., a U.S. luxury retailer, lost 2.24 percent to 40.52 dollars apiece Tuesday despite its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report that beat market expectations.
The latest data from Thomson Reuters showed that the S&P 500 companies' blended earnings in the second quarter of 2016 are expected to decrease 2.6 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to decline 0.5 percent.
Analysts thought that investor optimism from the stellar July jobs data also provided some upward jolts to the market. The U.S. total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 255,000 in July, well above economists' estimates of 180,000, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9 percent.
Overseas, European equities posted solid gains Tuesday on upbeat earnings. German benchmark DAX index at Frankfurt Stock Exchange jumped 2.50 percent, while British benchmark FTSE 100 Index increased 0.62 percent. In Asia, Chinese stocks kept rising Tuesday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index going up 0.71, as China's improving producer price index showed easing deflationary pressure.
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