US markets little changed as investors continued to grapple with rising bond yields and a mixed bag of corporate earnings releases - Dow slipped -14-points or -0.06% to log only its second 4-day losing streak in seven months. Merck & Co jumped +2.7% to be the biggest gainer in the index, buoyed by an upgrade from Goldman Sachs. The broader S&P500 inched +0.01% higher . According to data from WSJ Market Data Group, the S&P500 has been in correction territory - defined as a decline of at least 10% from a recent peak - for 51 trading sessions, the longest run in correction territory since 1 May, 2008. The S&P 500 slipped into correction territory (along with the Dow) on 8 February, and remains there because it hasn’t set a new high above its record set 26 January. The S&P 500 index is off ~7.1% from its recent peak, while the Dow is 8.2% shy of its late-January record, and the Nasdaq Composite Index is 6.1% below its most recent (12 March) record high. The technology-centric NASDAQ lost -0.25%. Google-parent Alphabet sightly outpaced consensus estimates with their first quarter numbers that were released after the closing bell. Alphabet posted their strongest quarterly sales growth (up +24% from a year earlier to US$24.9B) in almost four years, while costs also surged as the company bought real estate and invested in new opportunities such as artifical intelligence and cloud computing. Alphabet initially surged +4% higher post their earnings release before trading a little lower. Facebook (25 April), Amazon, Intel and Microsoft (26 April) are among major technology companies slated to report later this week.
