US stocks rise despite lackluster Europe talks
NEW YORK—US stocks closed higher on Friday, in their fifth straight day of gains, despite a meeting of eurozone finance ministers that scuttled hopes for strong action on Europe’s debt crisis.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 75.91 points (0.66 percent) to close at 11,509.09.
The broader S&P 500 rose 6.90 points (0.57 percent) to 1,216.01, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 15.24 points (0.58 percent) to close at 2,622.31.
Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) weighed down the Nasdaq, plummeting 20.1 percent after it reported sales and profits that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
The news confirmed fears that RIM’s BlackBerry devices are losing ground to Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Android smartphones.
At a meeting in Poland, the eurozone’s finance ministers decided to delay an eight-billion-euro ($11 billion) bailout loan for Greece until they had firmer evidence of Athens’s willingness to cut its deficit.
In another sign of friction, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was also attending the meeting, disagreed with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble over Europe’s handling of the debt crisis.
“Considering a disappointing meeting in Europe, the market is doing pretty well,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital.
The top performers among blue chips were consumer-goods giant Procter & Gamble (up 2.5 percent) and chipmaker Intel (up 2.0 percent).
Financial stocks, which have been battered in recent weeks by fears of contagion from Europe, fared more poorly, with JPMorgan Chase down 1.1 percent and Bank of America down 1.4 percent.
US stocks got a lift from a survey showing consumer confidence rebounded in September. The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index rose 2.1 points to 57.8, following a steep drop-off in August.
Bond prices rose slightly. The 10-year Treasury bond yield slipped to 2.08 percent from 2.09 percent late Thursday, while the 30-year bond ticked down to 3.34 percent from 3.35 percent.
Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.
