NEW YORK: Stocks rose in Friday trading, giving the Standard & Poor’s 500 index a fourth straight week of gains, as better-than-forecast results from General Electric Co. offset disappointing earnings from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
GE surged 4.6 percent, leading industrial shares higher. Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, plunged 11 percent and Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, lost 1.6 percent as technology stocks tumbled.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent to a record 1,692.09, erasing an earlier decline of as much as 0.3 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 4.8 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 15,543.74. The Nasdaq index slid 1.1 percent to 3,044.93, the biggest drop in a month.
“Earnings have held up reasonably well,” said Henk Potts, who helps oversee $282 billion as an equity strategist at Barclays Plc’s wealth unit in London. “We’ve seen some winners and some losers coming through. There has been disappointment around technology, but we don’t necessarily think that is going to be a long-term trend.”
U.S. stocks rallied, sending the S&P 500 and the Dow average to records, as earnings from Morgan Stanley and UnitedHealth Group Inc. beat estimates and jobless-benefit claims declined to a two-month low. The S&P 500 climbed 0.7 percent in the past five days and is up 19 percent this year.
About 84 percent of stocks in the index traded above their average prices from the past 50 days as of Thursday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While that’s below a 19-month high of 93 percent reached in May, it’s up from its 2013 bottom of 12.8 percent in June. Some 108 stocks in the index closed at a 52-week high Thursday; none finished at a 52-week low.
Equities futures got a brief boost Friday after the People’s Bank of China said it will remove the floor on lending rates offered by financial institutions starting today. The announcement builds on pledges by Premier Li Keqiang to expand an overhaul of interest rates, a development the World Bank says must be a priority in reform of the financial system.
Microsoft sank 11 percent to $31.40, the biggest drop since January 2009, after reaching a five-year high on July 16. The software company said fourth-quarter profit missed analysts’ projections by the biggest margin in at least a decade amid weaker demand for personal computers running Windows.
Google fell 1.6 percent to $896.60 after second-quarter sales and profit fell short of estimates as mobile advertising crimped average prices. The stock slid as much as 3.9 percent earlier in the session.
AMD sank 13 percent to $4.03 for the biggest drop in the S&P 500.