NEW YORK — Most U.S. stocks rose, erasing a loss for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the final minutes of trading Friday, as banks gained and results from IBM Corp. to Intel Corp. boosted technology shares.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. added at least 1.1 percent. IBM, Intel and Microsoft Corp. rose more than 2.9 percent as results beat projections.
General Electric Co. closed unchanged, rebounding from a 2.5 percent slump, as profit topped estimates, while sales were curbed by Europe. Google Inc. tumbled 8.4 percent as earnings missed projections.
Seven stocks gained for every five falling on U.S. exchanges Friday. The S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent to 1,315.38, extending its gain since Jan. 13 to 2 percent. The index rose for a third week, capping the longest streak since October. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 96.50 points, or 0.8 percent, to 12,720.48. IBM, which comprises 11 percent of the share-price weighted Dow, added 60.55 points to the index.
“It’s a mixed bag of earnings,” said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co., which oversees $85 billion. “Earnings growth is going to decline, but that’s already built into the market to a certain extent. If earnings don’t collapse, it won’t be a problem.”
S&P 500 companies, which beat profit estimates in the previous 11 quarters, will report a 3.4 percent increase in per-share earnings during the September-December period, analysts’ forecasts compiled by Bloomberg show.
Of the 51 companies in the S&P 500 that reported results since Jan. 9, 33 posted per-share earnings that beat projections, Bloomberg data show.
