By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch
Technology stocks were mostly higher Friday, propelled by gains
in shares of Red Hat Inc., which rose sharply a day after the
company posted upbeat results.
Red Hat (RHT) rallied 14.5% to close at $56.10, one of the top
gainers on the S&P 500(SPX), which was up 0.5%.
Late Thursday, the open-source software maker reported
better-than-expected profit and revenue. Raymond James analyst
Michael Turits upgraded the stock to outperform from market
perform, citing an "extremely strong fiscal third quarter."
After a volatile start, BlackBerry (RIMM) shares were up 15.5%
to close at $7.22 after the handset-maker reported a third-quarter
loss, but also announced that a five-year contract with
manufacturer Foxconn. It was the stock's best day since April
2009.
Shares of Twitter (TWTR) were also up 4.4% to close at $60.01.
Apple Inc.(AAPL) gained 1% to close at $549.02, giving the Nasdaq
Composite Index (RIXF) a lift. The benchmark rose 1.2% to close at
4,105 on Friday, and ended the week with a 2.6% gain. Apple also
posted its first stock gain in four days.
Oracle (ORCL) was off 0.6% to close at $36.37. The Redwood City,
Calif.-based software giant announced Friday that it was buying
marketing software company Responsys for $1.5 billion.
Gains also came from Google Inc.(GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) .
On the other hand, shares of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) shed 1% to close
at $27.79.
Shares of Amazon.com (AMZN) topped $400 for the first time ever.
The stock traded up 1.8% to close at $402.20.
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