Thursday's early afternoon trade: robust earnings, weak dollar lift Wall Street

Stocks on Wall Street advanced on Thursday, buoyed by solid corporate earnings and continued weakness in the dollar after comments by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Biogen Inc surged 2.11 percent after the drugmaker reported fourth-quarter revenue that beat Wall Street estimates on higher sales of recently launched drug Spinraza. The gains lifted the S&P healthcare sector 0.78 percent as one of the best-performing S&P groups.
Shares of Caterpillar Inc were volatile in the wake of its quarterly earnings, falling as much as 3.5 percent and rising as much as 2.8 percent. Shares were last up 0.59 percent. "If growth continues the way we expect, we should see a rotation out of these mega cap tech companies and into more of the higher-leveraged value companies," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.
"And Caterpillar is it."
Robust quarterly earnings reports and economic data have helped propel major Wall Street indexes to a strong start this year, with each on track for a fourth week of gains. According to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning, earnings growth for the benchmark S&P 500 is expected at 12.7 percent. Of the 118 companies in the index that have posted results, 78.8 percent have topped expectations, versus the 72 percent average over the previous four quarters.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 162.23 points, or 0.62 percent, to 26,414.35, the S&P 500 gained 6.46 points, or 0.23 percent, to 2,844 and the Nasdaq Composite added 18.38 points, or 0.25 percent, to 7,433.44. Ford Motor Co shares slumped 3.28 percent after the automaker posted a lower-than-expected quarterly net profit. The company's bottom line was hurt by rising commodity costs and unfavorable currency exchange rates, and it expected more pain to come from higher raw material prices in 2018. After the close of trading on Thursday, results are expected from Intel Corp and Starbucks Corp.