Wall Street opens in red dragged by technology shares

• S&P 500 Technology Index posts sharp losses despite Facebook shares' rally.
• Disappointing quarterly earnings from Ford weigh on carmakers.
• Today's upbeat macroeconomic data fail to help market sentiment turn positive.

Major equity indexes in the United States started the day in the negative territory on Thursday as investors continue to assess the latest earnings reports and try to figure out the state of the economy. As of writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were both down 0.4% on the day while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was erasing more than 0.8%.

Despite the sharp increase witnessed in Facebook shares, the S&P 500 Technology and Communication Services indexes are both suffering losses in the first hour of the session.

Meanwhile, Boeing shares extended the slide and carmaker Ford lost more than 6% after its earnings figures came in below experts' expectation. At the moment, the S&P 500 Materials index is losing nearly 1.5% on the day and the Industrials Index is down 0.4%.

Earlier in the day, the data published by the US Census Bureau showed that Durable Goods Orders expanded by more than expected in June, it did little to nothing to improve the market sentiment.