(MENAFN- AFP) Wall Street stocks moved mostly higher Friday after the January US employment report showed strong job and wage gains.
About 25 minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 17,807.90, up 23.02 points (0.13 percent).
The broad-based S&P 500 added 2.67 (0.13 percent) at 2,065.19, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index dipped 1.50 (0.03 percent) to 4,763.60.
The Labor Department said the US economy added 257,000 jobs in January, better than the 235,000 projected by analysts.
The report also included large upward revisions to jobs growth in November and December and said hourly wage growth gained 0.5 percent, a big improvement after a December drop.
Wage growth has been a key priority of the US Federal Reserve, which has signaled it wants to raise near-zero interest rates in 2015.
The key for the Fed will be sustainability, said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare.
"Another employment report like this one for February and the stock market will most likely have to start getting its mind around a rate hike actually happening in mid-2015 after all."
Dow member Verizon rose 1.4 percent after the telecom giant announced the sale of landline operations in three states to Frontier Communications for $10.54 billion and some 160 wireless towers to American Tower Corp for $5.0 billion. The company also announced a $5 billion share-repurchase program.
Frontier rose 3.1 percent and American Tower dropped 3.6 percent.
Microblogging company Twitter shot up 14.5 percent as fourth-quarter revenue nearly doubled from a year ago even as user-growth figures came in below expectations.
Investors reacted strongly to other technology earnings reports, sending shares of online networking site LinkedIn up 12.2 percent and video camera maker GoPro down 10.0 percent.
Travel site Expedia slumped 10.5 percent, Pandora Media plummeted 18.6 percent and reviews and listing service Yelp tumbled 20.0 percent.
Large banks moved higher. Dow member JPMorgan Chase rose 2.6 percent and Citigroup and Wells Fargo each gained 1.8 percent.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury rose to 1.88 percent from 1.81 percent Thursday, while the 30-year advanced to 2.47 percent from 2.42 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.
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