Stocks head for mixed open ahead of earnings

[February 03, 2009]  NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street is headed for a mixed open Tuesday, worried about how bad the next round of corporate earnings will be.

Companies reporting fourth-quarter results Tuesday include shipper United Parcel Service, drugmaker Merck & Co., and GMAC LLC, General Motors Corp.'s auto financing arm.

Investors are also bracing for data on January vehicle sales and pending home sales in December. Analysts are expecting gloomy news.

Ahead of the market's open, Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 37, or 0.47 percent, to 7,850. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures fell 1.60, or 0.19 percent, to 819.70, while Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 4.25, or 0.36 percent, to 1,193.00.

The market ended Monday mixed, with the Dow and S&P lower and the Nasdaq higher.

The indexes have fallen for four straight weeks due to growing worries about the economy, and the Dow and S&P suffered their worst January ever -- dropping more than 8 percent for the month.

In Washington, the Obama administration is reworking a bailout package for the financial institutions and devising new executive compensation restrictions for banks.

Early Tuesday, bond prices dipped. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 2.76 percent from 2.72 percent late Monday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.27 percent from 0.26 percent.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies. Gold prices fell.

Light, sweet crude rose 32 cents to $40.40 a barrel in premarket electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.62 percent. In midday trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.43 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 0.66 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 0.54 percent.

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On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com/

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com/

[Associated Press; By MADLEN READ]

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