There was good news and bad news on Wall Street on Wednesday. The good news was that the Dow Jones Industrial Average went above 12,000 for the first time in history, early in the session, before dropping back to end the day 0.36 percent higher to 11,992.68. The bad news was that it could not hold above 12,000 due to unfavorable earnings reports from the Apollo Group and Motorola. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite ended the session 0.3 percent lower to 2,337.15, while the S&P 500 closed at 1,365.96, a gain of 0.1 percent.

Motorola dropped 4.9 percent to $23.64 after it reported that its third quarter revenues were 17 percent higher to $10.6 billion. The decline was attributed revenues not reaching levels anticipated by analysts and in-company estimates.

Apollo Group reported that quarterly earnings were down and said that an investigation into how it grants stock options had found problems. The news sent the for-profit education company’s shares 22.9 percent lower to $37.55.

The semiconductors sector saw declines, as well. The exception was Intel, which added 1 percent to $21.11 even though it reported that quarterly earnings were down. Despite the decline, earnings did better than had been anticipated. Elsewhere in the sector, Analog Devices was 3.6 percent lower to $29.68, while EMC dropped 4.1 percent to $12.18 on a decline in quarterly profits and Applied Materials was 4.6 percent lower to $17.82.

IBM did better, adding 3.3 percent to $89.82 on better earnings than had been predicted. Also helping the computer maker higher was an upgrade from “neutral” to “buy” from Goldman Sachs.

Yahoo was instrumental in the day’s decline for the Nasdaq, dropping 4.8 percent to $22.99 on a quarterly report that did not meet expectations and which brought a downgrade from “outperform” to “market perform” from Piper Jaffray.

The New York equities markets were down at midday on Tuesday as Google issued a warning on slowing growth that hurt not only that company’s shares but those of other internet companies as well.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 0.8 percent at mid-session to 11,005.26, while the Nasdaq Composite had declined by 1.1 percent to 2,282.77 and the S&P 500 was down 1 percent to 1,1281.79.

Google’s chief financial officer said at an investor conference in New York that the company’s growth is slowing down. This, along with a fourth-quarter earnings report earlier in the month that was less than spectacular has sent Google’s shares down 16.8 percent since February 1. At midday, Google’s loss on the day amounted to 7.8 percent as shares traded at $359.87. Elsewhere in the sector, eBay was down 3.3 percent to $39.93 and Yahoo declined by 2.2 percent to $32.02.

Other losers included hospital supply company Hospira, which was down 16.1 percent to $39.48 on a report that it had recorded a 46 percent drop in earnings in the fourth quarter because of declining sales. Also down was for-profit education company Apollo Group, which lost 14 percent to $50.27 on a suspension of its 2006 outlook.

Staples, the office supplies retailer, was up 5.6 percent to $24.35 on a 15 percent gain in fourth-quarter net profits.