(NEW YORK, AP) – Stocks are inching lower in early trading on Wall Street as strong earnings from Pepsi, Verizon and other big companies stabilized the market after two big drops this week.

Major market indexes had small losses shortly after the opening bell Thursday.

The Dow Jones industrial average was off four points at 14,611. It dropped 138 the day before. It’s still down 1.7 percent for the week.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell a fraction to 1,551 and the Nasdaq composite fell two points to 3,202.

EBay fell after 5 percent after cutting its earnings forecast for the current quarter. Verizon and Pepsi rose.

After the closing bell, the tech sector weighs in with earnings from IBM, Google and Microsoft.