US stocks ended the week with a modest gain, despite being punished on Friday by a disappointing US jobs report that showed growth was still limping along in the world’s largest economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.59 percent to close at 12,657.20 after a four-day week shortened by the July 4 Independence Day holiday.
The broader S&P 500 gained 0.31 percent to end the week at 1,343.80, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite fared better, climbing 1.55 percent to 2,859.81.
Markets rallied earlier in the week in anticipation of a strong jobs number, but then the US Labor Department reported that unemployment was up to 9.2 percent and that only 18,000 jobs were created in June, triggering a sell-off.
“We’re still in an uptrend, but given the strong market that we’ve had in the past two weeks, we were due for a pullback,” said Michael James, a senior equity trader with Wedbush Morgan Securities.
For the time being, worries about the Greek debt crisis have eased and are not weighing on the market, James added.
Strong performers this past week included retailer Target, which rose 6.7 percent, and Microsoft, which gained 3.5 percent.
Bank stocks underperformed, with Bank of America down 3.5 percent, JPMorgan Chase down 2 percent and Goldman Sachs down 1.9 percent for the period.
One of the week’s biggest winners was Netflix, which gained 10.1 percent as it announced plans to extend its online film- and television-distribution service to Latin America.
Among the big losers was News Corp, which plunged 7.3 percent as it faced anger and investigations over allegations that its British tabloid News of the World had hacked the phone of a murdered girl and dead soldiers.
TYPICAL GAME
In the week ahead, Wall Street’s attention will turn to corporate earnings as companies begin to report their second-quarter results as the market plays a typical game: Worrying about results a lot and then rallying on pleasant surprises.
Analysts have been lowering earnings estimates of late and nervousness about the US economic picture abounds, especially after Friday’s poor jobs report. Financial services companies have seen the biggest downward revisions in earnings estimates in the last 30 days, with banks taking some of the biggest hits, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
However, profit growth could still be strong in the second quarter — and that could boost stocks. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.4 percent in the second quarter, but rallied in recent days on hopes for economic improvement.
Some companies set to release earnings include aluminum giant Alcoa tomorrow; Google and JPMorgan Chase on Thursday; and -Citigroup and Sony Ericsson on Friday.
Corporations seem to be in good shape and are ready to put the problems of the second quarter behind them, which could send the stock market higher, said Marc Pado, US market strategist for -Cantor Fitzgerald.
“Companies are well positioned, they have low inventories, they have a lot of cash, they kept their employment costs low,” Pado said.
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