NEW YORK, Oct 28: The major US stock indexes ended slightly higher on the week Friday with the Dow Jones Industrials managing to stay above 12,000 points despite a report showing a surprise slowdown in US economic growth.
In the week to Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 blue-chip stocks climbed 0.73 per cent to end at 12,090.26.
The Dow had tumbled in Friday trading, but managed to remain above 12,000 points, a barrier it smashed through for the first time ever last week.
The technology-weighted Nasdaq composite meanwhile rose 0.35 per cent to 2,350.62 while the broad-market Standard and Poor's 500 increased 0.64 per cent on the week to 1,377.34.
Stocks remained generally buoyant during the week on robust third-quarter corporate earnings reports, particularly from the oil sector as industry giant ExxonMobil Corp., posted record third-quarter net profits of 10.49 billion dollars.
Earnings from software maker Microsoft and AT and T also came in ahead of Wall Street forecasts, although profits from Boeing and Altria did not meet market hopes.
Third-quarter corporate earnings, however, in general continue to be robust, but the economic news is getting murkier.
The government said Friday that US growth on an annualized basis slowed abruptly to 1.6 percent, against forecasts of 2.1 percent, and compared to second-quarter growth of 2.6 percent.
The report showed US growth posted its worst performance since the first quarter of 2003, due above all to the end of a long boom in the US property market.
What really matters now is not third-quarter GDP (gross domestic product), is not third-quarter earnings. What matters now is fourth-quarter and 2007,said Hugh Johnson, an analyst with Johnson Illington Advisors.
The message of the market is: It will be a soft landing but if it is a soft landing it will be a close call, he said of the economy's future direction.
Some economists agreed with this outlook.
While weak growth fanned fears of a potential stall in the economy at the end of last week, indicators this week should, on balance, support the soft-landing scenario, according to Global Insight US economists Nigel Gault and Brian Bethune.
Analysts said the key report in the coming week would be Friday's release on October non-farm payrolls, and its revealing snapshot on the health of the job market.—AFP