citigroup earnings

Wary of Earnings Reports, Wall Street Opens Softly

Shares opened quietly Tuesday after Citigroup’s fourth-quarter earnings report kept investors uneasy during this first big week of corporate earnings reports.

Many are wary about bank earnings after a disappointing report from JPMorgan Chase on Friday helped send stocks sharply lower.

Citigroup’s earnings came in as expected. The bank reported a fourth-quarter loss of $7.6 billion loss, or 33 cents a share, with the bulk of that shortfall the result of expenses related to its repayment of $20 billion in government bailout money.

But the report, like JPMorgan Chase’s, reflected consumers’ struggle to repay their loans. Citigroup set aside $8.18 billion to cover bad loans during the quarter.

In early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was about 46.8 points or 0.12 percent higher, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 5.1 points higher. The Nasdaq was up 17.15 points or 0.39 percent.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 was down 15 points, or 0.27 percent, while Germany’s DAX fell 13.11 points, or 0.37 percent. The CAC-40 was 0.37 percent lower.

News that Kraft Foods and Cadbury agreed to a $18.9 billion deal appeared to push Cadbury to the list of risers on the FTSE 100, gaining just under 4 percent to 837 pence a share, more or less in line with the offer price of 840 pence a share.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 0.8 percent to close at 10,764.90. However, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1 percent, to 21,677.98, while Shanghai index rose 0.3 percent, to 3,246.87. JAL shares, which have lost more than 90 percent of their value over the last week, tumbled 20 percent Tuesday to 4 yen before finishing flat at 5 yen.

Wall Street was poised for a subdued start to the week after being closed Monday for the Martin Luther King public holiday.

In the run-up to Wall Street’s open, investors will be turning their attention to the next batch of fourth quarter corporate earnings. Besides Citigroup, other big banks reporting earnings this week include Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Over the week, 65 companies in the S.&P. 500 post their results this week. As well as the banks, earnings from Google, I.B.M.. and McDonald’s will be closely monitored.

Over all, earnings have been fairly mixed, with upside surprises from the likes of Intel offset by disappointments elsewhere, most notably the aluminum maker Alcoa.

Meanwhile, bond prices were mixed. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, was unchanged from 3.68 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.07 percent from 0.05 percent.

The dollar mostly rose against other major currencies, while gold prices also rose.