Stocks Opened Lower, HSBC’s First-Half Profit Rose 10%

Stocks opened slightly lower on Monday as investors looked for new reasons to buy following a recent rally that repeatedly took major indexes to record levels. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lately dropped 67.20 points, or 0.43 percent, to
15,591.16. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 3.67 points, or 0.21 percent, to 1,706.00. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 3.07 points, or 0.08 percent, to 3,686.52.

HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, said on Monday that earnings rose 10 percent in the first half of the year, thanks in part to lower charges for bad loans, especially in the United States. Profit rose to $14.07 billion in the first six months of the year from $12.74 billion in the period a year earlier, slightly missing analysts’ forecasts.

Dell Inc(NSQ:DELL) and Chief Executive Michael Dell clinched a new $25 billion deal on Friday, boosting the bid and offering a special dividend in hopes of ending months of wrangling with opponents of the founder’s proposed buyout of the world’s No. 3
PC maker.

Millions of Time Warner Cable subscribers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas could be without CBS Corp programming for several weeks as the two companies appear no closer to settling a fee dispute, analysts said.

General Motors Co (GM) and its Chinese joint ventures sold 221,580 vehicles in China in July, up 11.1 percent from a year earlier, the U.S. automaker said on Monday. That compares with a 10.6 percent year-on-year gain in June.