Stocks close mostly higher, helped by tech firms’ earnings and a rise in oil prices

Stocks ended slightly higher Friday, helped by better-than-expected quarterly results from Google’s parent Alphabet and from retailer Amazon and by a modest recovery in oil prices.

However, the gains were held back by disappointing results from oil giant Exxon Mobil as well as by news from the Bank of Japan, which did not announce as much stimulus as many had hoped.

The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 24.11 points, or 0.1%, to 18,432.24.

The Dow was held back partly by a drop in Exxon Mobil. The company reported its smallest quarterly profit in 17 years, well below what analysts expected, because of the continuing weakness in oil prices. Its major competitor, Chevron, fared slightly better. Although Chevron’s earnings dropped sharply from a year earlier, the company’s results still beat analysts’ expectations.

Exxon fell 1.4% to $88.95. Chevron climbed 0.7% to $102.48.

Broader market indicators ended higher. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 3.54 points, or 0.2%, to 2,173.60 and the Nasdaq composite increased 7.15 points, or 0.1%, to 5,162.13.

Wall Street’s busiest week of corporate earnings was dominated by mostly strong results from technology companies including Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, jumped 3.3% on Friday to $791.34. The company reported earnings of $8.42 a share, well above the $8.04 that analysts were looking for.

Amazon rose 1% to $758.81. The online retail giant reported a profit of $1.78 per share, well above the $1.11 analysts expected. Amazon reported it sold $30.4 billion in goods in the quarter, up 31% from a year earlier.

The strong results from Amazon and Google, as well as results from other tech companies, helped lift the technology-heavy Nasdaq 1.2% this week, while the Dow lost 0.8%. The S&P 500 closed the week down slightly. It was the first weekly loss for the S&P 500 after four weeks of gains.

So far, corporate profits appear to be coming in well ahead of what were very low expectations. Earnings in the S&P 500 are down 2.4% from a year earlier, which is better than the 5.2% decline expected when the earnings season started, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Investors remain cautious, however. The run-up earlier this month made stocks more expensive than investors are historically comfortable with. The S&P 500 is trading at 18.5 times its expected earnings for the next year, well above the 12 to 14 times investors typically look for.

The presidential election will continue to grow as an issue for markets in the next several months. Investors dislike uncertainty, and the unexpectedly close presidential election and mostly unknown policies of Republican nominee Donald Trump puts them on edge.

Next week, another fifth of the S&P 500 will report their results, including Proctor & Gamble, General Motors, Kraft Heinz, 21st Century Fox and Allstate.

Kate Moore, chief equity strategist for BlackRock, said the July jobs report due out Aug. 5 could give investors direction, since the June and May jobs reports showed two clashing directions for the U.S. economy.

Japan’s central bank ended a policy meeting Friday by announcing it will expand purchases of exchange traded funds from financial institutions to help inject more cash into the world’s third-largest economy and pursue its 2% inflation target. But the measures fell short of hopes for more aggressive action. That helped the yen surge as investors priced in fewer yen in circulation. The dollar dropped to 102.03 yen from 105.45 yen.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.46% from 1.51% the day before.

Benchmark U.S. crude rose 46 cents to $41.60 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oil, fell 24 cents to $42.46 a barrel in London.

Heating oil rose less than 1 cent to $1.28 a gallon, wholesale gasoline futures rose 1 cent to $1.32 a gallon and natural gas was little changed at $2.88 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In other currencies, the euro rose to $1.1179 from $1.1073 the day before and the British pound rose to $1.3239 from $1.3148.

The price of gold rose $16.70 to $1,349 an ounce, silver rose 16 cents to $20.31 an ounce and copper rose a penny to $2.22 a pound.

UPDATES:

2:35 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information.

1:20 p.m.: This article was updated with closing prices.

7:35 a.m.: This article was updated with more recent prices and additional information.

This article was originally published at 7 a.m.