U.S. stocks open higher as China rate cut adds to tech rally

Strong quarterly earnings from several big-name technology companies helped push Us stocks higher in midday trading Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) gained 133.56 points, or 0.76 percent, to 17,623.

A three-week surge in stocks has now lifted the Standard & Poor’s 500 index above where it was at the beginning of 2015 for the first time since the summer. The Nasdaq, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, gained 94 points, or 1.9 percent, to 5,014.

“There was downbeat sentiment going into the earnings season, so a few of the good earnings results we’ve seen are based on lower expectations”, said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network.

The stock indexes notched healthy gains early on Friday, as investors bid up shares in Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet a day after the three tech giants reported surprisingly strong quarterly results.

Shares of Whirlpool Corp dropped 8.7 percent to US$145.90 after executives said currency would subtract US$2.5 billion from the appliance maker’s annual revenue.

On Tuesday, though, Apple is expected to report $51.1 billion in revenue, a 21.3 percent increase compared to the same quarter of previous year.

Outside of Thursday’s tech-centric earnings report wave, and to fuel this idea that tech is eating the NASDAQ, Facebook (FB) stock also hit an all-time high this morning at 2 a share.

Market index rally also got another boost after the second-largest economy in the world lowered its reference rate by 25 basis points to 4.35% and one-year deposit rate by the same amount to 1.5%.

WRONG TUNE: Pandora Media tumbled 32.4 percent after the Internet radio giant reported a loss for the third quarter and gave a weak outlook. The stock lost $6.80 to $12.39.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE:RCL) also reported better-than-expected third-quarter profit on higher demand for its Caribbean and European cruises and increased revenue in on-board spending. Stocks in the Technology and Health Care sectors led, each gaining more than 2% on the session. After rising as high as 96.579 in early Asian trade, it was last holding at 96.337, up 1.9 percent for the week.

Friday marked a big day for a trio of tech stocks. Mario Draghi, head of the ECB, signaled Thursday that the bank could consider providing more stimulus during its meeting in December. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.3 percent. Brent Crude fell 36 cents to $47.72 a barrel in London.

Biotech stocks were shaken in September when USA presidential candidate Hillary Clinton first tweeted concerns about drug prices and the selling spread to other areas of the healthcare sector.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.09 percent.

Revenues rose 23% to $25.4bn (in constant dollars it would have been a whopping 30% – pesky forex) as Amazon’s range of services widens to include such things as from groceries, one-hour deliveries, music streaming and ‘original’ TV shows featuring Jeremy Clarkson et al.

“You are seeing the cloud shift everyone was talking about, andMicrosoft and Amazon are benefiting from it”, said Sid Parakh, a portfolio manager at Becker Capital Management, which has about $3 billion under management.