All Earnings, All the Time -- Thursday's IP Market Recap

Great earnings news across the market offset negative existing-home sales news from the National Association of Realtors, weak manufacturing activity numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Business Outlook Index and a drop in the Conference Board’s index of Leading Economic Indicators.

The Nasdaq finished up 0.79% at 2,965, while the S&P 500 and Dow both finished ahead 0.27% at 1,376 and 12,943, respectively.

Technology stocks did the heavy lifting Thursday. eBay (NASDAQ:) soared nearly 9% on the day to a 6-year high following Wednesday’s release of outstanding earnings, with PayPal and eBay Marketplaces posting impressive gains for the quarter. Fellow e-tailer Amazon (NASDAQ:) shared in the good news and saw its shares rally more than 4%.

The glee from Wednesday’s after-the-bell earnings release from IBM (NYSE:) was carried forward to 4% advances on the day. VMware (NYSE:), which has changed CEOs while announcing strong preliminary earnings, rallied for the second straight day, gaining nearly 3%. Citrix (NASDAQ:), Oracle (NASDAQ:) and Dell (NASDAQ:) all followed suit, rising up more than 1%.

The technology roll continued after hours, as Google (NASDAQ:) beat earnings expectations with a profit of $10.12 per share on revenue of $8.42 billion. Google shares edged up 2.2% in after hours trading.

Meanwhile, Microsoft (NASDAQ:) swung to its first quarterly loss since going public in 1986, missing analysts’ forecast despite a 4% increase in revenues. MSFT’s loss was primarily attributable to a $6 billion write-down of its ill-fated investment in social media company aQuantive, as underlying earnings were 73 cents per share. And even MSFT couldn’t be held back, moving up around 3% in early after-hours trading.

Walgreen (NYSE:) shares rocketed nearly 12% on an announced agreement with Express Scripts (NASDAQ:

), ending a rocky period between the two companies. The news sent competitors CVS Caremark (NYSE:) and Rite-Aid (NYSE:) down 6% each.

Financial services companies took it on the chin as both American Express (NYSE:) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) released disappointing numbers. AMEX was hurt by slower consumer spending, while Morgan’s securities and fixed-income trading business was slower than expected. MS sank 5.3%, while AMEX dropped 3.5%.

Despite already getting hammered earlier this month thanks to SuperValu (NYSE:), grocery store chain Safeway (NYSE:) tumbled more than 4% as revenues increased but earnings decreased for the second quarter, disappointing investors.

General Electric (NYSE:), Schlumberger (NYSE:) and Xerox (NYSE:) are among companies reporting earnings tomorrow.