OREANDA-NEWS. January 24, 2012. The US indices were flat on Monday. S&P 500 Index added 0.05% while Russell was down by 0.2% with Oil & Gas (+0.66%) as the leaders, and Telecommunications as the laggards (-0.78%) with the Verizon as the weakest stock. HP and Apple led the Technology sector higher.

Of 56 S&P 500 Index constituents the EPS of 39 and revenues of 33 companies beat expectations so far.

Asian indices were also flat on Tuesday. Hong Kong, Chinese and Korean exchanges were closed for the observance of the Lunar New Year Holiday. Japanese Nikkei was up by 0.22%. S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.02%. BOJ cut its GDP growth forecast from +0.2 to 0.4% to -0.3%. The Bank of India left the rate unchanged at 8.5%.