Despite some disappointing earnings from a few bellwether stocks, major indexes turned things around and managed to post a winning session today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.17%) fought all day, and when the closing bell rang, it was sitting higher by 10 points, or 0.07%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq had a somewhat easier day, as they were in the green nearly the whole day and closed higher by 0.88% and 1.25%, respectively.
This morning, I touched on the big Dow losers: IBM (IBM 1.38%), McDonald's, and Hewlett-Packard. To read why those stocks were in the red, click here.
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Shares of Cisco (CSCO -0.66%) fell 0.58% today. The routing giant has just recent begun gaining traction in it server business, but that may be why shares declined. With IBM's poor results hitting the market, investors in other companies that also operate in the server business may be getting nervous that if the king of the server world is struggling, the smaller players in that industry may also be having a difficult time.
Caterpillar (CAT -1.11%), which only fell into the red toward the end of the trading day, closed down 0.04%. While that is not all that bad for one day, considering that the stock fell 5.43% this past week and is down 10.24% year to date, investors don't want to see any decline in share prices, regardless of how small it may be.
With very little news directly relating to the company today, the fall may be related to the company's upcoming earnings announcement, which is scheduled for this coming Monday. Analysts expect revenue to hit $13.81 billion and earnings per share to come in at $1.44. Expectations have been reduced a number of times over the past few months as the company continues to show weaker sales numbers throughout the world. A miss on Monday will surely have the stock falling even lower, while a beat could cause a nice pop. For more information about what to expect on Monday, click here.
Lastly, shares of General Electric (GE 1.99%) tanked today. The stock lost 4.06% after it announced that first-quarter earnings rose 16% and met analysts' expectations. But management said results in Europe during the quarter were worse than they had expected, and the company didn't paint the most positive picture of the region moving forward. Any GE investors should hold tight at this time, but be aware that further issues from European countries could cause the stock to further decline.
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