Wall Street is pointing slightly lower in early trading but is on track to close the week with solid gains on healthy quarterly earnings reports from large U.S. corporations.

Stocks in Asia moved higher after a morning briefing by Chinese officials showed the government remains determined to boost share prices.

Netflix, Oracle and other technology stocks are lifting U.S. indexes Wednesday as their profits pile higher and excitement builds around the moneymaking prospects of artificial intelligence. The S&P 500 was up 0.