Stocks waver in morning trade; IBM weighs on Dow average

The market is coming off a three-day winning streak.

At 10:59 a.m. ET (1459 GMT), the Dow Jones industrial average was up 25.29 points, or 0.15 percent, at 17,255.83, the S&P 500 was up 3.97 points, or 0.2 percent, at 2,037.63 and the Nasdaq composite index was down 2.44 points, or 0.05 percent, at 4,903.04. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dipped less than one point to 2,033.

Shares of Tesla dropped 6.6 percent to US$213.03 in heavy volume.

SanDisk Corp. rose 5.6 percent, up for a fifth consecutive day with the company said to be in advanced talks to sell itself to Western Digital Corp.

Verizon’s (VZ.N) shares were up 1.2% after the largest United States wireless service provider reported better-than-expected revenue and profit. Team Health rose $8.26 to $60.76.

IBM fell almost 6 percent to $140.57, hitting five-year lows, after it reported a bigger-than-expected fall in quarterly revenue.

“In the face of falling revenues, the market is going to be concerned about the next several quarters unless there can be a few turnaround and resumption of growth in revenue”, said John Carey, portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston.

Harley-Davidson was the worst in the discretionary group, slumping the most since 2009 as the motorcycle maker’s third-quarter profit missed analysts’ estimates and it trimmed its shipments outlook again. Harley shares slid $7.56 to $48.49. S&P 500 earnings are expected to have declined about 4 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. The stock slid $1.99, or 0.9 percent, to $208.65.

YUM SPLIT: Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, rose 3.9 percent after saying it plans to spin off its China business, which has stumbled recently. The stock added $1.83 to $73.54. Shares in Lam Research gained $4.54, or 6.5 percent, to $74.54. A 17 percent surge in multi-family housing, which includes apartments, accounts for almost all of the increase.

TOKYO (AP) – Asian stock markets were mostly higher Wednesday as Japan’s weak export figures boosted hopes for more central bank stimulus.

PMC-Sierra jumped almost 14.1 percent to $11.68 after the chipmaker received a buyout offer from Microsemi, valuing the company at $2.4 billion. The CAC-40 in France was 0.9 percent lower at 4,660.

Index lost 3 percent, with Celgene Corp. and Amgen Inc. down at least 2.6 percent.

The broader Topix gained 0.3 percent to close at 1,499.28 and the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 rose 0.4 percent to 13,428.88. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.4 percent to 22,989.22 and South Korea’s Kospi added 0.5 percent to 2,039.36.

ENERGY: Benchmark USA crude fell 38 cents to $45.90 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price worldwide oils, rose 14 cents to $48.75 in London. Other Asian markets ended little changed.

BONDS AND CURRENCIES: USA government bond prices rose.