Wall Street flat as home improvement retailers get Amazoned

By Kimberly Chin

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended little changed on Wall Street on Thursday as a deal between Sears and Amazon weighed on home improvement retailers while gains in Microsoft helped buoy the Nasdaq.

Retailers and appliance makers fell after Sears said it would sell its Kenmore home appliances on Amazon and integrate the brand's smart gadgets with the online giant's Alexa digital assistant.

Sears was up 10.6 percent at $9.60 and Amazon shares rose 0.2 percent.

Home Depot fell 4.1 percent, shaving off 40 points from the Dow and weighing the most on the S&P 500. Retailers Lowes and Best Buy , as well as appliance maker Whirlpool , were down between 3.9 and 5.6 percent.

 

"I think a lot of earnings (beats) are due to the low-interest-rate environment. Once you see a tick up in rates, the earnings are going to be affected. But right now, it looks like it's going to continue. Earnings overall are very strong," said Anthony Conroy, president at Abel Noser in New York.

Microsoft shares rose 0.9 percent in after-hours trading to $74.89 after it reported a quarterly profit that more than doubled, helped by a tax benefit and strong growth in its cloud business.

Overall earnings continue to beat expectations and major indexes closed Thursday at or near all-time highs. Analysts are estimating an 8.6 percent rise in second-quarter earnings and a 4.6 percent increase in revenue for the S&P 500 companies from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> fell 28.97 points, or 0.13 percent, to close at 21,611.78, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 0.38 point, or 0.02 percent, to 2,473.45 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 4.96 points, or 0.08 percent, to 6,390.00.

Despite the market's continued attention on business-friendly signs out of Washington, stocks did not react to the White House's announcement it had withdrawn or removed from consideration more than 800 proposed regulations that were never finalised during the Obama administration.

"It's not going to make things any better, it just won't make them worse," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.

"I see no tangible evidence that these regulation pullbacks have helped the economy one iota."

T-Mobile gained as much as 3.3 percent after the wireless carrier's quarterly results topped analysts' estimates, but reversed course in the afternoon and closed down 1.4 percent at $61.12. Verizon rose 1.8 percent and AT&T added 1.1 percent.

Qualcomm fell 4.9 percent after the chipmaker's forecast missed estimates and several Apple suppliers filed a lawsuit accusing Qualcomm of taking additional licensing money over the assemblage of iPhones.

Property and casualty insurer Travelers closed down 1.5 percent after reporting a drop in quarterly profit.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.01-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.14-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.

About 5.92 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, compared with the 6.35 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions.

(Reporting by Kimberly Chin in New York; Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by James Dalgleish)