The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday, Aug. 7, edition that United States stocks ended lower on Thursday after a strong start to the week. A Reuters dispatch to The Globe reports that a robust earnings season helped propel the Dow Industrials and S&P 500 to record highs earlier this week. On Thursday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 464.02 points, or 0.85 per cent, to 53,885.10, the S&P 500 lost 13.52 points, or 0.18 per cent, to 7,710.03 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 15.09 points, or 0.06 per cent, to 26,348.35. On Wall Street, Western Digital tumbled 13 per cent and Sandisk dropped 6.8 per cent in the wake of their quarterly results. Both companies have surged this year. Sandisk is up more than 400 per cent and Western Digital is up about 160 per cent. Of the 382 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Wednesday, 84.8 per cent have topped analyst expectations, well above the 68-per-cent average beat rate since 1994. SpaceX shares erased losses from earlier in the session and closed 6.1 per cent higher, defying expectations that they would be pressured by insider selling, as the lockup period for early investors holding the stock expired.