Stocks off to a mixed start

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks opened mixed Wednesday on impressive Morgan Stanley earnings and a Home Depot stock buyback, while investors awaited a key oil inventory report.

The Dow Jones industrial average (up 25.36 to 13,660.78, Charts) rose 0.1 percent at the start of the session. The broader S&P 500 (down 0.15 to 1,533.55, Charts) index edged higher while the tech-laden Nasdaq (up 0.16 to 2,626.92, Charts) composite index was barely changed.

In earnings news, Morgan Stanley (up $1.97 to $89.77, Charts, Fortune 500) delivered better-than-expected second-quarter earnings that jumped 40 percent, handily beating analysts estimates, despite woes in subprime mortgages -home loans given to borrowers with poor credit - which have hit rival Wall Street firms.

Package delivery company FedEx (up $2.05 to $110.11, Charts, Fortune 500) reported higher net income of $610 million or $1.96 a share, that just barely beat Thomson First Call estimates.

Overseas markets were lifted by easing concerns about rising bond yields. European stocks moved higher in midday trade, while Asian markets rose, with the Hong Kong index hitting a new trading high.

Oil prices fell ahead of the government's weekly report on fuel inventories. U.S. light crude for July delivery fell 20 cents to $68.90 a barrel.

In major corporate news, home improvement retailer Home Depot (up $2.39 to $40.66, Charts, Fortune 500) announced it approved an additional share buyback of up to $22.5 billion after Tuesday's market close. It also said it would sell its building supply unit to a group of private equity firms for $10.3 billion.

Two Bear Stearns (down $1.50 to $145.29, Charts, Fortune 500) hedge funds heavily invested in securities backed by subprime mortgages are close to being shut down, with Merrill Lynch seizing assets, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft (down $0.06 to $30.40, Charts, Fortune 500) has agreed to change its Vista operating system to make it easier for users to run desktop search programs. The move comes in response to a complaint filed by Google (up $2.88 to $517.19, Charts, Fortune 500).

Top executives at Toyota (Charts, Fortune 500) plan to slow the automaker's U.S. factory expansion and the company is leaning towards a greater reliance on exports from Japan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (up $0.22 to $23.90, Charts, Fortune 500) may swap its social networking site MySpace for a 25 percent stake in the No. 2 search engine Yahoo (up $0.15 to $27.78, Charts, Fortune 500), a newspaper reported.