Stocks sink after Dow record

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks opened lower Thursday, a day after the Dow Jones industrials hit a record, as a mixed bag of earnings reports and declines in overseas markets rattled investors.

The 30-share Dow and the S&P 500 both sank about 0.5 percent in the early going. The Nasdaq composite lost about 0.7 percent.

Treasury bond prices crept higher and oil fell.

Overseas, stocks in Asia fell sharply after investors reacted to China's GDP report, which showed that the economy grew 11.1 percent from a year earlier on strong investment and exports. The news fueled fears that Beijing might raise interest rates to cool the economy.

Stocks also fell in Europe. The dollar was lower against the euro and the yen.

"We've had a market that is trending higher and is in record territory," Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co., said before the market opened.

But "as we look at today's market we've got some fear that perhaps if China's economy slows, the global economy will slow as well," Hogan said, noting that was making investors nervous.

Stocks in the news included Merrill Lynch (Charts, Fortune 500), whose profits blew past forecasts, Bank of America (Charts, Fortune 500), Merck (Charts, Fortune 500), Altria (Charts, Fortune 500) and home builder D.R. Horton (Charts, Fortune 500). Horton's earnings tumbled 85 percent.