Google leads US market surge
October 19, 2013
Shares in Internet giant Google surged 13.8 percent in trading on Friday, breaking the one-thousand-dollar barrier and closing at $1,011.41 (around 740 euros). This steep climb followed the company's quarterly results for July-September, published on Thursday, which showed net profits just shy of $3 billion and a 12-percent year-on-year increase in turnover.
Google is valued by investors at roughly $335 billion, still well shy of fellow technology giant Apple which has cleared the $450-billion mark.
A major US index, the Standard and Poor's 500, also closed up 0.65 percent on the day, continuing its climb into record territory that began in Thursday's trading.
The Nasdaq composite logged gains of 1.3 percent overall on Friday, while the Dow Jones industrial average was up a more modest 0.2 percent. At 15,399.65, the Dow Jones index is less than 300 points shy of its own all-time high.
Markets in the US have been particularly bullish since the last-minute mid-week deal to end a partial government shutdown and prevent the world's largest economy from defaulting on some of its sovereign debt.
"We've moved from the dysfunction of Washington to the reality of the global economy, and it looks pretty good," Ron Florance, deputy chief investment officer at Wells Fargo Private Bank, told the AP news agency.
Markets in Europe were similarly positive ahead of the weekend, with all the major indexes apart from Belgium's BEL-20 closing in the green. The German DAX climbed 0.6 percent, Paris' CAC 40 gained just over one percent and the FTSE 100 in London was up 0.7 percent.
msh/av (AP, Reuters)