Wall St mixed; euro rises against dollar

By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street equities were mixed and stocks on European and world markets moved higher on Tuesday, boosted by strong corporate earnings, while the euro reversed course and rose against the dollar.

Investors held off making big U.S. equities bets as they waited for more earnings reports and news on Greece, said Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in St. Louis.

"The focus in the very short term is earnings," he said. "I didn't see any big beat or surprise in earnings today."

Europe's pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 index closed up 0.93 percent, with Publicis, Sky and ARM Holdings all up more than 4 percent after reporting results.

The MSCI gauge of stocks in major markets was up 0.3 percent at 437.13.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 51.37 points, or 0.28 percent, at 17,983.56. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 0.04 points, or 0.00 percent, at 2,100.44. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 28.23 points, or 0.57 percent, at 5,022.84.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell 4/32, the yield at 1.9105 percent.

The euro was up 0.26 percent at $1.076 after falling earlier in the day after following a European Central Bank proposal to increase the insurance it would demand in return for emergency funding to Greek banks.

The dollar also reversed course and fell 0.19 percent against a basket of major currencies. It is roughly 23 percent higher than it was a year ago.

"I'd say the dollar is overbought. In the near term you could see the dollar fall against the euro," said Wren, adding that U.S. monetary policy could be looser than investors expect and that European policy may be tighter than expected.

Even after several rounds of negotiations, hopes are slim that Athens will be able to convince euro zone finance ministers to continue their financial support at meetings on Friday. This could mean it runs out of cash by the end of the month.

On Monday, Greece ordered state entities to park spare cash at the central bank in a bid to pay civil service salaries and IMF loan repayments due in early May.

An unprecedented debt default in the currency bloc could open the way for Greece to exit the euro, though ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio said on Monday that a country that defaults would not have to ditch the currency.

Brent crude dipped 0.9 percent to $62.88 per barrel but was still up 14 percent since the start of the month. U.S. crude contracts for May, due to expire later on Tuesday, fell 0.05 percent to $56.35, but were still up about 12 percent since April 8. [O/R]

(Additional reporting by Tanya Agrawal in Bengaluru, Marc Jones in London, Editing by Shri Navaratnam, John Stonestreet, Meredith Mazzilli and Dan Grebler)