US blue-chip stocks ended close to unchanged on Friday as investors took in mildly encouraging economic reports.
Technology shares ended slightly down, wrapping up their sixth straight week of losses, as a slow rotation into more conservative stocks continued.
The blue-chip Dow Jones industrials average was buoyed by defence and aviation companies Boeing Co and United Technologies Corp, rebounding from sharp losses in the previous session, fed by fears over government spending on military aircraft.
Nasdaq was dragged down by drug firm Genzyme Corp, after it announced a $1 billion acquisition.
"There was no blowout number in any of the data this morning," said Phil Orlando, senior portfolio manager at Federated Investors' large cap growth fund. "But the market took some sense of comfort that the numbers were slightly better than expected and there were no egregious disappointments."
The US economy grew a bit faster than first thought in the fourth quarter and business activity in the Midwest expanded for a 10th straight month, according to two separate reports released early on Friday.
Consumer sentiment fell in February, but not as much as economists had forecast, the University of Michigan's final survey for the month showed.
The broadly positive data fed gains for blue-chip stocks for most of the session, but a slight pullback in the last hour of trading left all the major indexes close to the unchanged mark.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 3.78 points, or 0.04 percent, at 10,583.92.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.03 point to 1,144.94. The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index fell 2.75 points, or 0.14 percent, to 2,029.82.
For the week, the Dow fell 0.3 percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent and the Nasdaq fell 0.4 percent.
It was the second down week for the Dow, and the sixth straight losing week for the tech-dominated Nasdaq.
For the month, the Dow rose 0.9 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent, but the Nasdaq fell 1.8 percent.
That makes the third up month in a row for the Dow and the fifth up month for the S&P 500.
Nasdaq's losing month snapped a string of four up months.
Each of the stock gauges are up for the year, but off long-time highs set in January and early February 2004.
On Friday, the Dow was lifted by Boeing and United Technologies, making up some of their losses earlier in the week after the US Army's decision on Monday to cancel the $39 billion Comanche helicopter project, a joint venture between United Technology unit Sikorsky and Boeing. Boeing shares rose 93 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $43.37, while United Technologies rose $2.26, or 2.5 percent, to $92.11.
Autodesk Inc led the S&P 500 in gains after it posted higher fourth-quarter income and revenue on strong sales of its computer-aided design software.
Its shares rose $2.79, or 10.7 percent, to $28.76.
The Nasdaq was held in check by Genzyme Corp, which said on Thursday it would acquire Ilex Oncology Inc for about $1 billion to expand its cancer drug business. Genzyme shares fell $2.83, or 5.3 percent, to $50.45.
Trading was moderate, with 1.5 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, just above the 1.4 billion daily average for last year.
About 1.9 billion shares were traded on Nasdaq, just ahead of the 1.8 billion daily average last year. Advancers outnumbered decliners by 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by 6 to 5 on Nasdaq.
Comments
Comments are closed.