NEW YORK (AFP) - Wall Street stocks rose modestly Friday (Oct 14) following solid earnings from large banks, but Twitter sank on reports that would-be suitor Salesforce.com has walked away from a takeover.
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all reported lower third-quarter earnings, but still bested analyst expectations. That helped boost sentiment following disappointing earnings reports earlier in the week, analysts said.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities, also cited solid Chinese inflation and US retail sales data as supportive of stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.2 per cent to 18,138.38.
The broad-based S&P 500 rose less than 0.1 per cent to 2,132.98, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index added less than 0.1 per cent at 5,214.16.
Twitter fell 5.1 per cent after Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff told the Financial Times it won't bid on Twitter. Salesforce shares jumped 5.2 per cent.
Dow member Goldman Sachs gained 1.9 per cent after a British court dismissed the Libyan Investment Authority's suit that accused the US bank of duping Libyan officials into bad investments worth US$1.2 billion (S$1.6 billion).
HP Inc. fell 4.4 per cent after it announced plans to cut 3,000 to 4,000 jobs over the next three years.
Biotech and pharma companies had a bad day, with Amgen falling 1.5 per cent, Biogen 1.3 per cent and Celgene 2.1 per cent. Dow member Merck lost 0.6 per cent and Mylan shed 3.6 per cent.
