Wall Street fluctuate in opening amid Facebook and Caterpillar results

US stocks fluctuated in opening session near an all-time high as investors weighed earnings from Facebook Inc. (FB) to Caterpillar Inc. amid data showing sales of new homes fell more than estimated.

In fact Facebook jumped 5.2 percent after saying second-quarter sales surged 61 percent while Under Armor Inc. surged 11 percent after increasing its 2014 profit target.

Also Caterpillar sank 2 percent after forecasting full-year profit that fell short of estimates and AT&T Inc. dropped 1.3 percent as earnings missed forecasts.

Otherwise today we watch number of people who applied for unemployment insurance benefits in the week that ended July 19 plummet actually by 19,000 to 284,000, which is the lowest level since February 2006, indicating clearly that companies have further slowed down the pace of layoffs and are letting go of few workers.

In fact and to be more precise the initial jobless claims for July 19 came in at 284 thousand; below the projected 307 thousand and from a prior revised 303 thousand from 302 thousand while that the continuing claims for July 12 came in also below the market forecasts of 2510 thousand at 2500 thousand.

Accordingly:

-The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.07% to 17098.58

-The S&P 500 Index gained by 0.03% to 1987.56

-The NASDAQ Composite shed by 0.12% to 4468.19. As of 10:15 a.m.