NEW YORK – Microsoft and IBM drove the Dow Jones industrial average up in Friday trading after the tech giants reported stronger earnings than analysts had expected.
But an earnings miss by Google caused its stock to plunge Friday, and other indexes were slightly lower.
The Dow rose 51 points to 12,675 as of noon Eastern time. That’s a gain of 0.4 percent.
Microsoft said sales of Xbox games and Office software helped push revenue up in the last quarter of 2011. IBM credited better sales of software and services and raised its earnings outlook for the year. Both Microsoft and IBM gained 4.3 percent.
In other trading, the Standard Poor’s 500 index fell 4 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,310. The Nasdaq composite fell 7, or 0.3 percent, to 2,781.
Plenty of things are going right, said Frank Fantozzi, CEO of Planned Financial Services, an independent wealth manager in Cleveland. Applications for unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in nearly four years. Housing sales are steadily rising. And even though high-profile companies such as Google and JPMorgan Chase have posted disappointing earnings results in the past week, the bulk of companies are beating estimates, he said.
“Overall, we’re moving in the
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