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New York: Wall Street stocks finished solidly higher Friday, concluding a rollercoaster week on a positive note following strong results from Google and Microsoft.
Both tech giants emphasized significant investments in artificial intelligence, cheering the market and helping to offset another disappointing US inflation reading.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.4 percent at 38,239.66.
The broad-based S&P 500 advanced 1.0 percent to 5,099.96, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 2.0 percent to 15,927.90.
Friday’s gains pushed all three major indices into positive territory for the week.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in March, up 0.2 percentage points from a month earlier.
The benchmark is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve, which has indicated it could keep interest high for longer if inflation remains elevated.
Among individual companies, Google parent Alphabet shot up 10 percent after announcing a dividend and the authorization of $70 billion in share buybacks.
Alphabet reported profit of $23.7 billion on revenue of $80.5 billion, crediting growth in cloud computing, YouTube and online search advertising.
Social media company Snap, which runs the youth-focused Snapchat, soared more than 27 percent after it reported more quarterly revenue than expected by analysts.
At the opposite extreme, chip company Intel sank 9.2 percent as it projected a loss in the second quarter on revenues that lagged expectations.
The forecast exacerbates “concerns that the company has simply fallen too far behind competitors Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Taiwan Semiconductor,” Briefing.com said of Intel.
