22 Jul 2009, 1946 hrs IST, AGENCIES
NEW YORK: US stocks fell on Wednesday as the market sized up a mixed batch of earnings reports and traders banked profits from the recent robust Wall Street rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 21.53 points (0.24 per cent) to 8,894.41 in opening trades. The technology-heavy Nasdaq shed 4.39 points (0.23 per cent) to 1,911.81 and the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index pulled back 4.90 points (0.51 per cent) to 949.68. "Traders are taking the opportunity to books some profits from the steep rally seen on Wall Street recently, which is overshadowing better-than-expected profit reports from Apple, Boeing, and Pfizer," Charles Schwab & Co. analysts said in a client note. The action came after stocks rose Tuesday as the market weighed improved earnings reports and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's economic update to Congress. The Dow rose 0.77 per cent, its seventh straight session of gains, the Nasdaq added 0.36 per cent, its 10th consecutive increase, and the S&P 500 advanced 0.36 per cent. Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com said that Wednesday's trading could in part be chalked up "to an underlying sense that the latest rally effort is hitting an exhaustion phase where it is now being concluded that the better-than-expected earnings results have been priced into stocks." "In many cases, the pricing activity got carried away," he said. "It is only natural that some of the excessive enthusiasm gets unwound as the market starts to pay closer attention to the overall quality of earnings being reported as opposed simply to the quality of the headline trumpeting positive earnings surprises."