US stocks rise again in spite of mixed earnings
Wall Street stocks shrugged off early weakness Friday and rose for a second straight session, adopting a perspective of measured optimism following a busy week of mixed earnings. "It's a little bit of a relief trade," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare, adding that investors remain "a little guarded." The week's economic data was "okay," said O'Hare, who noted that earnings from influential technology companies largely met expectations and in some cases exceeded them. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.8 percent to 34,098.16. The broad-based S&P 500 also advanced 0.8 percent to 4,169.48, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.7 percent to 12,226,58. Among economic data points, the Federal Reserve's favoured measure of inflation, the annual personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE), slowed last month ahead of next week's meeting of the US central bank. Most analysts expect the Fed to again lift interest rates by a quarter-point on Wednesday in response to inflation. Amazon dropped 4.0 percent despite reporting better-than-expected earnings on concerns about weakening demand in its cloud computing business. But Intel jumped 4.0 percent, even as it reported a loss of $US2.8 billion, its biggest-ever quarterly loss. However, analysts said the gains reflected hopes the chip company's business has bottomed out. Oil giant ExxonMobil jumped 1.3 percent after reporting that first-quarter profits more than doubled to US$11.4 billion, reflecting better refining industry conditions and a boost from higher oil and gas output. But First Republic plunged 43.5 percent amid doubts over its prospects after the bank disclosed a big drop in deposits. (AFP)