Dow Soars, Stocks Drive to Record Highs as Banks Kick Off Earnings Season - TheStreet

Stocks traded higher Friday, Jan. 12, and the three major equity indexes reached intraday records as big U.S. banks kicked off the fourth-quarter earnings season.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 187 points, or 0.73%, the S&P 500 rose 0.52%, and the Nasdaq gained 0.48%.

Leading the Dow higher were Home Depot Inc. (HD) , Merck & Co. (MRK) and Boeing Co. (BA) .

JPMorgan & Chase Co. (JPM) , America's biggest bank, said fourth-quarter profit fell 37% to $4.23 billion but adjusted earnings per share of $1.76 topped analysts' forecasts of $1.69. The stock rose 1.1%.

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) , the U.S. lender under fire from regulators and customers over abusive sales practices, posted its biggest quarterly profit increase in four years after taking a $3.35 billion gain related to passage of the U.S. tax law in December. Shares fell 1%.

BlackRock Inc. (BLK) said fourth-quarter profit more than doubled, as the largest U.S. money manager benefited from runaway investor demand for its iShares exchange-traded funds and a $1.2 billion net gain due to the U.S. tax law passed in December.

Facebook Inc. (FB)  fell 4.2% after the social media giant said it would re-tool its news feed to direct more content from the families and friends of its 2 billion monthly active users.

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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) tumbled 2.2% after the chipmaker said its microprocessors were susceptible to both variants of the Spectre security flaw. AMD said several days ago there was a "near zero risk" that its chips were susceptible to the security flaw.

In U.S. economic news, the consumer price index in December rose 0.1%, meeting economists' estimates. Retail sales in December rose 0.4%.

In commodity markets, global oil prices eased from their three-year peaks after customs data from China showed that imports slowed to 33.7 million barrels over December, down 4 million from the previous month to an average of around just under 8 million barrels a day. West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell 0.58% to $63,44 a barrel.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 benchmark, the region's broadest measure of share prices, rose 0.16%, while Asian stocks ended Friday's session mostly higher.

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