Stocks up slightly on strong retail results

In this Aug. 15, 2012, file photo, spe­cial­ists Thomas Bishop, left, and Michael Pis­tillo work at their post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stock futures were rel­a­tively flat ahead of the release of the lat­est data on con­sumer sen­ti­ment Fri­day, amid a mixed bag of earn­ings from retail­ers. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

JOSHUA FREED

AP Busi­ness Writer

Stocks resem­bled sum­mer vaca­tion­ers on Fri­day, ris­ing not-too-impressively in the morn­ing and then mostly lay­ing around for the rest of the day.

Pos­i­tive news from retail­ers was the main rea­son U.S. indexes posted small gains. Apple helped too by hit­ting a new high.

Traders in both the U.S. and Europe are on vaca­tion, so vol­umes were low. And the dog days con­tin­ued for Face­book. A 4 per­cent decline left it shares at about half the price of its May ini­tial pub­lic offering.

The Dow Jones indus­trial aver­age rose 25.09 points to close at 13,275.20. The Stan­dard & Poor’s 500 index rose 2.65 points to close at 1,418.16. The Nas­daq rose 14.20 points to close at 3,076.59.

The mod­est gains put some indexes close to their highs for the year. The Dow is now within four points of 13,279, its high for the year set on May 1. The S&P 500 is within one point of its four-year high set on April 1.

The Dow has now risen eight out of the last 11 days and fin­ished the week up a half-percent. The Dow is sport­ing a gain for the year of almost 8.7 per­cent for the year, while the S&P 500 is up almost 12.7 percent.

Next week is likely to be more event­ful. Investors will get Chi­nese hous­ing reports, min­utes from a closely-watched Fed­eral Reserve meet­ing, and job­less claims. And Europe’s prob­lems, which were mostly off cen­ter stage in recent days, return front-and-center as Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel meets in Berlin with Greek Prime Min­is­ter Anto­nis Sama­ras to talk about progress in over­com­ing Greece’s debt crisis.

“Next week, you have some­body say some­thing that no one expects, in thin trad­ing it could really move mar­kets around,” said John Canally, invest­ment strate­gist at LPL Financial.

Strong retail earn­ings and out­looks drove Friday’s gains. Gap Inc. shares rose 4.8 per­cent after it boosted its out­look and posted a 29 per­cent jump in net income. That sug­gests the oper­a­tor of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Repub­lic stores is finally on the way to a turnaround.

Shares of Ann Inc., the par­ent of retailer Ann Tay­lor, jumped 20 per­cent after its second-quarter profit rose 24 per­cent. Foot Locker rose 1.7 per­cent after quar­terly prof­its leaped 59 per­cent, boosted by higher sales, cost con­trols and a small tax-related gain.

A few retail­ers did strug­gle. Sears Hold­ings Corp. fell 1.3 per­cent, giv­ing back some of Thursday’s big gain.

Expec­ta­tions for retail­ers were low, but they beat them, said Lawrence Crea­tura, port­fo­lio man­ager at Fed­er­ated Investors.

“Nobody going into the sum­mer expected a vibrant con­sumer, so expec­ta­tions were muted,” he said.

Tech­nol­ogy stocks saw both highs and lows on Friday.

Apple hit an all-time high, ris­ing almost 2 per­cent to $648.11. It now has a mar­ket value of about $608 bil­lion, almost 50 per­cent higher than No. 2 Exxon Mobil Corp. at $408 billion.

But declines con­tin­ued for Face­book and Groupon, the online coupon company.

Face­book closed at $19, about half the value of its ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing price of $38. Investors are wor­ried that mobile ads won’t bring in as much money as those seen on desk­top com­put­ers. And Facebook’s short-term prob­lems include the expi­ra­tion of a lock-up period on Thurs­day that had kept early investors from selling.

Groupon lost another 5 per­cent to close at $4.75. It has now set a new low every day since Tues­day. Its woes include foreign-exchange rates in Europe and a worry that its busi­ness isn’t very hard for com­peti­tors to copy.

Health care stocks declined a half-percent, the biggest drop among the 10 indus­try groups in the S&P 500. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies led the decline. Pfizer fell 1 per­cent, and Merck dropped 1.4 percent.

Com­puter chip maker Mar­vell Tech­nol­ogy Group Ltd. stock dropped 14 per­cent after a rev­enue decline sliced its quar­terly net income by more than half. Its CEO cited a slow­ing econ­omy for the trouble.

Global mar­kets edged higher after Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel gave a new pledge of sup­port for the euro. On Thurs­day she said that “we feel com­mit­ted to do every­thing we can to main­tain the com­mon cur­rency.” Ger­many is Europe’s eco­nomic pow­er­house, so its sup­port is crit­i­cal to the euro’s sur­vival. The Ger­man DAX rose 0.6 percent.

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