Wall Street flat as earnings from some big names disappoint

By Tanya Agrawal

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed in early trading on Thursday after the S&P and the Nasdaq touched all-time highs as earnings from some big names disappointed.

Qualcomm fell 4.4 percent after the chipmaker's forecast missed estimates.

Cigarette maker Philip Morris was down 2.8 percent after its quarterly profit came in below expectations.

Home Depot was off 2.7 percent and weighed on the Dow and the S&P.

Still, overall earnings continue to beat expectations which, along with a rally in technology shares, helped all three major indexes to close at a record high on Wednesday.

Analysts are estimating an 8.7 percent rise in second-quarter earnings and a 4.6 percent increase in revenue for the S&P 500 companies from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Visa, eBay, Capital One Financial are due to report results after the closing bell.

"The surge in stock prices is showing no signs of letting up as corporate America's earnings power continue to expand," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial.

"The mostly better-than-expected results are lifting investors' confidence - a basic fundamental positive for equities markets."

The S&P 500 tech sector, which has been the best performing sector this year, broke its previous record closing high that had held since March 2000 in the midst of the dot-com and Y2K tech stocks bubble.

Microsoft will report results after the market close. Other major tech names such as Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon are due to report results next week.

At 9:48 a.m. ET (1348 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 10.05 points, or 0.05 percent, at 21,630.7, the S&P 500 was up 0.87 points, or 0.03 percent, at 2,474.70.

The Nasdaq Composite was down 1.25 points, or 0.02 percent, at 6,383.79.

Seven of the 11 major S&P sectors were higher, with the energy index's 0.53 percent rise leading the advancers.

Economic data showed weekly jobless claims fell to a five-month low. Claims fell to 233,000, below the 245,000 expected by economists polled by Reuters.

American Express fell 1.1 percent after the card company's profit declined 33 percent in the second quarter.

Abbott Laboratories rose 1.9 percent after the healthcare company raised its full-year profit forecast.

Property and casualty insurer Travelers was down 2.5 percent after reporting a drop in quarterly profit.

T-Mobile was up 1.1 percent after the wireless carrier's quarterly results topped analysts' estimates.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,383 to 1,168. On the Nasdaq, 1,172 issues fell and 1,167 advanced.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Arun Koyyur)