North American stocks looked set for another tame day, with major indexes showing little change soon after the start of trading on Thursday.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 37 points or 0.3 per cent, to 12,291. The broader S&P 500 rose 2 points or 0.2 per cent, to 1,352. In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index fell 1 point, to 12,520.
The moves follow an upbeat reading on U.S. initial jobless claims for the period ended last week: Claims fell to 358,000, a new recovery low and beating estimates.
Bank of America Corp. rose 1.4 per cent and International Business Machines Corp. rose 0.7 per cent. However, Cisco Systems Inc. fell 2.3 per cent, a day after hiking its dividend and beating earnings estimates with its quarterly results. Groupon Inc. plunged 10.5 per cent after reporting an unexpected quarterly loss on Wednesday, after markets closed.
Among Canadian stocks, BCE Inc. BCE-T fell 2 per cent after reporting adjusted quarterly earnings that nudged higher over last year but nonetheless fell shy of analysts’ estimates. Manulife Financial Corp. MFC-T fell 1.3 per cent after reporting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss, but said that its chief financial officer was leaving.
