Thursday’s Mid-Day Movers: 3 Stories Driving Markets

The U.S. equity markets were fighting to remain in positive territory on Thursday morning following some enormously bad earnings and underwhelming economic indicators.

At 12:30 p.m.: DJIA: +0.05%, S&P 500: +0.19%, NASDAQ: +0.24%.

Here are three stories moving markets on Thursday afternoon:

1) Last month the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis produced some shocking news: advance figures showed that the United States economy unexpectedly shrank by 0.1 percent from October through December, missing expectations for growth. But according the revised fourth-quarter estimate, released on Thursday morning, real gross domestic product grew at a rate of 0.1 percent for the period, a decided improvement to the previously reported figures. However, this growth is obviously still far below desired levels, and it missed expectations for modest growth of just 0.5 percent.

“While today’s release has revised the direction of change in real GDP, the general picture of the economy for the fourth quarter remains largely the same as what was presented last month,” commented the news release, putting the numbers in harsh perspective… (Read more.)