Stocks rise despite weak

A series of upbeat earnings results shored up the stocks in the early trading. U.S. Steel reported Monday that its fourth-quarter earnings have soared following the company's acquisition.
Meanwhile, American Express Co., the biggest U.S. credit-card company by purchases, posted a drop of 79 percent in fourth-quarter profit, which still topped the most pessimistic estimates.
But stocks gave up some of the early gains as the Conference Board, a New York-based research institution, reported a record low of U.S. consumer confidence.
January Consumer Confidence Index fell to 37.7 from a revised 38.6 in December, worse than the economists had expected and is the lowest level since the index began recording in 1967.
The Standard &Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city index of home prices released Tuesday tumbled by a record 18.2 percent from November 2007, the largest decline since its inception in 2000.

Weak economy cuts

The final figure indicates a loss of 4.83 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, as previous company data show net profits in the first three quarters totaled 8.25 billion yuan.
The decline reflected steep falls in steel prices and slow inventory movement starting in the second half, said the northeast-based company.
Steel prices in China plummeted in the second half as the deepening world economic slowdown weakened industrial growth and steel demand in the country.
The price of 6.5 mm carbon steel wire rods, a major steel product, was down more than 40 percent since June, Jia Yinsong, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official, told a forum earlier in January. Market data show the product was sold at about 3,400 yuan per ton.
The company also attributed the weak performance to the costs of buying raw materials and fuel at high prices earlier in 2008.