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NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks opened narrowly mixed Wednesday as Wall Street digested generally downbeat economic reports.
The U.S. Producer Price Index for final demand dropped 0.5 percent in September, seasonally adjusted, exceeding market consensus of a 0.1-percent decline, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.
On an unadjusted basis, the final demand index fell 1.1 percent for the 12 months ending in September, the eighth straight 12-month decline.
The Commerce Department announced Wednesday that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for September increased 0.1 percent from the previous month to 447.7 billion U.S. dollars, on par with market expectations.
In corporate news, after Tuesday's closing bell, JPMorgan Chase reported net income of 6.8 billion dollars, or 1.68 dollars per share for the third quarter of 2015, on revenue of 23.5 billion dollars, missing market estimates. Its shares fell over 2 percent in early trading Wednesday.
Bank of America Corp.'s shares jumped over 2 percent in early trading Wednesday after the release of the company's quarterly results that beat market expectations.
Bank of America Corp. posted net income of 4.5 billion dollars, or 0.37 dollar per diluted share, for the third quarter of 2015, compared to a net loss of 232 million dollars, or 0.04 dollar per share, in the same quarter last year.
Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 7.69 points, or 0.05 percent, to 17,074.20. The S&P 500 edged up 0.57 point, or 0.03 percent, to 2,004.26. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 3.78 points, or 0.03 percent, to 4,800.38.
