NEW YORK, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks traded mostly lower on Thursday, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 22,000 milestone for the first time.
By noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched down 0.13 point, or less than 0.01 percent, to 22,016.11. The S&P 500 shed 5.48 points, or 0.22 percent, to 2,472.09. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 14.96 points, or 0.24 percent, to 6,347.68.
The Dow has risen over 11 percent and recorded three 1,000-points milestones in 2017. The benchmark climbed above 22,000 on Wednesday, lifted by strong earnings from Apple.
In corporate news, shares of Tesla rallied over 6.5 percent early Thursday, after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly results.
Latest data from Thomson Reuters showed that the S&P 500 companies' blended earnings in the second quarter of 2017 are expected to rise 11.8 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to increase five percent.
Meanwhile, investors also turned their eyes to a slew of economic data, as they tried to find clues on when the Federal Reserve might start the balance sheet reduction.
In the week ending July 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 240,000, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous week's revised level, according to the U.S. Labor Department Thursday. Enditem
