Solid economic data managed to light a fire under US benchmarks, which edged higher.
U.S. producer prices for July offered some encouragement for the bulls, rising for the third straight month.
Producer prices climbed 0.2% in July, after rising 0.4% the month before. Economists had predicted a rise of 0.1%.
Meanwhile, industrial production in July was 0.6% higher, thanks mainly to increased output of vehicles.
Economists had expected a rise of 0.4%.
Capacity utilization nudged up to 78% from 77.7% in June, coming in just below the consensus forecast of 78.1%.
At 3:36 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) remains in positive territory, up 77 points at 17,485, and has been joined there by the broader-based S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX), up eight points at 2,091, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) jumped 18 points to 5,051, reversing an earlier slump.
There was mixed news from the retail sector, with J C Penney (NYSE:JCP) advancing 5.6% after its second quarter update, Nordstrom rising 4.1% to US$78.00 after its update while womenswear seller Christopher & Banks lost almost half its value after falling well short of sales expectations.
J C Penney's sales surge was driven in particular by the strength of its Sephora cosmetics outlets.
The iconic US retailer posted a net loss of US$138 million, or 45 cents a share, for the quarter ended in early August, against a loss of US$172 million, or 56 cents a share, a year earlier. This is a better than expected result, given street expectations of a 46 cents per share loss.
Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN), the largest US luxury department-store chain, forecast fiscal full-year earnings above Wall Street’s projections, aided by growing sales.
Earnings per share are projected to be $3.85 to $3.95 in the fiscal year ending January 30, the Seattle, Washington-based company said in a statement on Thursday. That’s up from its previous guidance of $3.65 to $3.80 per share, and surpasses the analysts’ $3.75 average estimate, according to Capital IQ.
It was a different story at Christopher & Banks. Net sales for the second quarter of the year came in at around US$94mln, a long way short of the company's guidance of sales of between US$100mln and US$103mln.
In the same quarter last year the retailer clocked up sales of US$106.6mln, albeit from 545 stores compared to the 521 stores still trading in the second quarter of this year.
Same store, or like-for-like, sales tumbled by around 12.4%, and margins took a hit as well, with the company indicating it expected gross margin would decline by 250 basis points, or 2.5 percentage points, from the same quarter of last year, as lower sales hit its buying power.
Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) was friendless, however, after it lowered revenue guidance for the final quarter of its fiscal year.
The company reported a 10% year-on-year rise in fiscal third quarter revenue to US$2.49bn late on Thursday and a 17% hike in orders for new equipment, but analysts had expected a higher revenue number, in the region of US$2.54bn.
Shares retreated 36 cents to US$16.67.
King Digital Entertainment (NYSE:KING) lost almost one-eighth of its value as the market found quarterly financials were far from regal.
The mobile games maker is still struggling to follow up the huge success of Candy Crush, which still generates about 40% of group revenue three years after its launch.
During the period King had two new launches, the AlphaBetty Saga word game and a new ‘sim’ game called Paradise Bay.
At US$490mln revenue was down more than 15% compared to the same period of 2014, and second quarter profit fell to US$119mln from US$165mln last year.