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Blue-chip stocks

decline; Nasdaq sets record high

NEW YORK: Blue-chip stocks ended lower Friday, but the Nasdaq market set another new high as investors took stock of this week's corporate earnings reports.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 16.26 points to 5,535.48. For the week, it rose 2.89 points.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 2.40 points to end at 1,138.70, surpassing Thursday's record of 1,136.30.

In the broader market, advancing issues led declines 1,379 to 893 on active volume of 419 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

"We had the bulk of the excitement earlier this week with so many earnings," said Jay Meagrow, an institutional trader at McDonald & Co. "We had some great ones and some bad ones but overall the tone of earnings was better than expected."

Analysts said investors were encouraged as a growing list of some of America's biggest companies reported solid quarterly results, including Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Chrysler Corp., Ford Motor Co., American Airlines parent AMR Corp., Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson.

Technology stocks got a lift on Friday after Microsoft Corp. late Thursday reported another quarter of better-than-expected results. Microsoft rose 3/4 to 109-3/4.

"Microsoft's results offset what IBM's did to the market," said Peggy Farley, chief executive at Amas Securities Inc.

On Wednesday, International Business Machines Corp. posted earnings that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but its warnings of an unfavourable impact from the stronger dollar in the second quarter, sparked a 70-point drop in the Dow Jones index. On Friday, IBM was unchanged at 105-3/8.

Farley said the earnings being reported by technology companies are better than expected and she remains optimistic about the sector's prospects.

A highlight in Friday's market was the debut of both Planet Hollywood -- a 10.8 million share global offering that was the biggest Nasdaq IPO ever -- and CompuServ.

Planet Hollywood, the theme restaurant chain, skyrocketed 8-7/8 to 26-7/8 and was the most-active Nasdaq stock.

CompuServe, the second largest online service, surged 3 to 33.

"It shows there's some speculative froth in the market. The IPO calendar is still very big," said David Shulman, chief equity strategist at Salomon Brothers.

He that several "hot" IPOs have recently jumped at their openings and then trailed off after several weeks.

"That shows the underwriter valuation may be a fairer assessment of what the company is worth than what it opens at," he said.

Among the companies that reported stronger earnings, Iomega rose 2-55/64 to 37-1/8 and Kellogg was up 7/8 to 71-1/8.

Tribune Co. jumped 3-5/8 to 70-1/8 on better earnings and First Boston upgraded newspaper stocks. Times Mirror rose 1-1/8 to 39-1/4, New York Times added 1-1/2 to 32-3/4, and Knight-Ridder was up 2 to 70.

AMR topped the NYSE actives list, losing 2-1/2 to 90-7/8. The parent of American Airlines said it will redeem all of its $1.02 billion of outstanding 6-1/8 percent convertible subordinated debt on May 20.

EMC lost 2-1/4 to 18-5/8 after reporting disapointing first-quarter earnings.

U.S. stock exchanges held a minute of silence at 10:02 EDT to commemorate the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City blast.

The Standard & Poor's composite index of 500 stocks rose 1.46 points to 645.07. The American Stock Exchange index rose 2.80 to 585.88, a new high.

The NYSE Composite index of all listed common stocks rose 1.01 to 346.40. The average share was up 12 cents.

The Wilshire Associates Equity Index -- the market value of NYSE, American and Nasdaq issues -- was 6,392.604 up 19.867 or 0.31 percent.-Reuter