By Rodrigo Campos
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed in choppy trading on Thursday following three days of gains, as underwhelming results from tech giants Google and IBM were offset by upbeat quarterly numbers including those from Morgan Stanley and General Electric.
Economic data was supportive of equities, with the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits up less than expected last week and near pre-recession levels. Factory activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region expanded in April at a faster clip than anticipated.
Blended earnings per share growth on S&P 500 components rose to 1.7 percent from Wednesday's 0.6 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed, indicating most companies that reported in the past 24 hours exceeded expectations.
The technology sector capped gains on the S&P, with Google
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"The market is digesting the sharp move we've seen this week and doing its best to ignore the results from IBM and Google, which didn't look great," said Steve Sosnick, equity risk manager at Timber Hill/Interactive Brokers Group in Greenwich, Connecticut.
"I'm mostly focused on bank earnings, which have been OK for the most part, and there haven't been many outliers, which is a good thing."
He said moves should be taken with a grain of salt as many desks are short-handed ahead of the long weekend. U.S. markets will be closed for Good Friday.
Shares of Morgan Stanley
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 12.03 points or 0.07 percent, to 16,412.82, the S&P 500 gained 0.57 points or 0.03 percent, to 1,862.88 and the Nasdaq Composite added 6.304 points or 0.15 percent, to 4,092.529.
If indexes hold their gains, the Dow and S&P will post their largest weekly gains this year.
Wall Street rallied 1 percent on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said persistently low inflation poses a more immediate threat to the U.S. economy than rising prices, stressing that the U.S. central bank would be delivering policy stimulus for some time to come.
General Electric
China's Weibo Corp
Western Union
Shares of MoneyGram International
SanDisk
Chipotle Mexican Grill
(Additional reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Meredith Mazzilli)