THE NASDAQ Composite and S&P 500 chalked up record high closes Friday, propelled by strong results from tech behemoths Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

    The NASDAQ Composite rose 0.71 percent to end at 5,092.09, its second straight record high close. The S&P 500 rose 0.23 percent to a record high close of 2,117.69 points, barely above its previous high of 2,117.39 set March 2. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 9.3 points, or 0.1 percent, to 18,067.

    “Tech is the whole story today on the upside,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. “That’s where the excitement is.”

    “The NASDAQ has been outperforming this earnings season as it’s clearly less impacted by energy prices and the strong dollar,” Hogan said.

    The NASDAQ Composite advanced Thursday to a record close, its first since March 10, 2000. The tech-heavy index rose 0.4 percent to close at 5,056.06, surpassing its previous all-time high of 5,048.62. The NASDAQ’s gains this year have outpaced advances in the Dow industrials and S&P 500. The NASDAQ has rallied 6.8 percent in 2015 through Thursday’s close, while the Dow has added 1.3 percent and the S&P has advanced 2.6 percent. Over the last 12 months, the NASDAQ has surged 22 percent, more than twice the Dow’s 9.4 percent gain.

    On Friday the NASDAQ Composite’s rise was driven primarily by a number of solid corporate earnings reports.

    Amazon surged 14.13 percent to a lifetime high after revenue beat estimates. Google ended 2.9 percent after reporting higher quarterly results while Microsoft jumped 10.45 percent after it topped estimates.

    The S&P hit an intraday high of 2,120.92 Friday. The NASDAQ earlier hit 5,100.371, the highest since its intraday record of 5,132.52 in March 2000 that marked the peak of the dot-com bubble.

    “This chapter that the NASDAQ is writing is more suggestive that it’s a market that, while still technology-weighted, is much more mature,” said Steven Baffico, chief executive officer at Four Wood Capital Partners in New York. “The companies in it reflect that, companies like Cisco and Microsoft.”

    Microsoft, Amazon and Google accounted for the bulk of the NASDAQ’s rise Friday.

    The share gains by the trio of established technology companies did not surprise Michael Tiedemann of Tiedemann Wealth Management, which manages US$9.5 billion.

    “Big, older tech looks attractive,” said Tiedemann. He said while he likes “the Apples, the Googles, the Microsofts,” he is more wary of social media and “disruptive technology” firms whose valuations may be higher.

    Overall, first-quarter earnings are coming in above lowered expectations. Of the 201 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, nearly three-quarters have reported earnings above the mean estimate, according to FactSet. Still, earnings growth is widely expected to decline, with analysts currently predicting a decrease of 2.8 percent, FactSet said. (SD-Agencies)