Earnings News Lifts Markets To Higher Close

The markets recovered to close higher with the Dow climbing 95 points to 8711 over upbeat earnings and lower first time applications for unemployment benefits. Nasdaq gained 22 points to 1885.

On the upside

Hong Kong software and online services company CDC (Nasdaq: CHINA) will make an initial public offering of 4.8 million American Depositary Shares of its subsidiary CDC Software.

Analysts expect Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI) to report disappointing results from its lupus drug trial on Monday but speculators sent the stock price up.

Although MGIC Investment (NYSE: MTG) widened second quarter losses, revenue rose to top estimates.

On the downside

Fitch Ratings slashed the rating of UCBH (Nasdaq: UCBH) further into speculative territory after the parent of United Commercial Bank suspended dividends on both its common and preferred stock.

Ivanhoe Mines (NYSE: IVN) warned that there will be further discussions with the Mongolian parliament over development of its Oyu Tolgoi mine.

CapitalSource (NYSE: CSE) will offer 17.5 million common shares at $4.10 per share.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 5 to 2 on the NYSE and by a more than 5 to 3 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks rose 6 points to 522.