After Market: A Well-Earned Rebound for Investors

Filed under: Earnings, Market News, Mergers & Acquisitions, Investing

Investors brushed aside geopolitical concerns Friday and focused on the fundamentals: earnings, which overall looked pretty good. That explains why, just one day after the S&P 500's largest drop in three months, stocks bounced back in force. The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) gained 121 points, the Nasdaq composite (^IXIC) picked up 68, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index (^GPSC) was higher by 20 points.

There was plenty to digest on the earnings front. Conglomerate General Electric (GE) met expectations with its results, and began the process of launching an IPO for Synchrony Financial, its North American consumer-finance division. GE expects that listing to raise $3.1 billion. The stock ended the day lower by roughly half a percent.

Profits rose at Honeywell (HON), as did the stock, picking up more than 1.5 percent.

Results were a mixed bag for Google (GOOG). Its revenue grew 22 percent, but the cost per click for ads, a key metric investors look at, fell 6 percent fueling concerns about mobile ad revenue. Still, several analysts raised their price target or rating on the stock and shares gained more than 3.5 percent.

IBM (IBM) also came out with its results late on Thursday. Earnings grew, thanks mainly to cost cutting, but for the ninth quarter in a row, revenue fell and Big Blue's software and services divisions didn't show the growth some had expected. Its shares ended slightly lower.

Earnings surprisingly fell at chipmaker AMD (AMD) and shares sold off sharply, down 16 percent. Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) also fell down 4.5 percent. But Avago Technologies (AVGO), which also makes semiconductors, rallied more than 4 percent. The stock is up a staggering 40 percent so far this year.

Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) gained almost 5 percent on earnings that grew 9 percent.

It was also a busy day for IPO's. Sage Therapeutics was up 67 percent and TubeMogul gained 65 percent.

On the mergers and acquisitions front, Gentiva Health Services (GTIV) rejected a bid from Kindred Healthcare, saying some other bidder -- it won't yet say who -- has come up with a better offer. The stock rallied 16 percent.

AbbVie (ABBV) has reached an agreement to by Shire in the U.K. for roughly $54 billion. The stock was up more than 2.5 percent.

And Microsoft (MSFT) gained slightly after hitting a 14-year high on the announcement the company was laying off 18,000 workers to streamline its business.

And finally, Amazon (AMZN) gained more than 1.5 percent after introducing a new plan. For 9.99 a month you can now get unlimited access to over 600,000 of Amazon's ebooks and thousands of audiobooks. For speed-readers this is a dream come true.

We're going to be taking a bit of a break on the Money Minute and After Market videos, but they'll be back soon. In the meantime, you can still find coverage of all of the news that matters to you and your money on DailyFinance.

-Produced by Karina Huber.

What to Watch Monday:
These major companies are scheduled to release quarterly financial statements.