In early afternoon trade in New York on Monday, equities markets were slightly ahead after last week’s declines.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.3 percent to 13,278,72, while the Nasdaq Composite had added 0.15 percent to 2,548.6 and the S&P 500 was 0.32 percent higher to 1,458.32.

The gains came as the Federal Reserve and other central banks added more cash into their monetary systems in order to calm investor nerves about the credit market.

The New York Fed announced $2 billion in overnight repurchase agreements, while the Bank of Japan put another $5 billion into the system and the European Central Bank added another $65.3 billion.

Also helping the US markets was a new report from the Commerce Department that showed retail sales up 0.3 percent in July, a bit more than had been anticipated.

This new data left the retail sector mixed, however, with Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) up 21 cents to $46.28 but home improvement retailer Home Depot (NYSE: HD) falling 53 cents to $35.39.

Technology stocks were mostly higher in afternoon trade even though they had retreated from morning gains.

Qwest Communications (NYSE: Q) was up 19 cents to $8.56 on the news that it had named a new CEO after the retirement of its previous one.

Qualcomm (NAS: QCOM) added 96 cents to $38.85 after its general counsel resigned in the wake of legal troubles in its continuing dispute with Broadcom (NAS: BRCM), which fell 59 cents to $35.26.

Storage technology group EMC Corp (NYSE: EMC) was $1.12 higher to $18.84 as it prepared to spin off 10 percent of its Vmware storage virtualization unit.

In the subprime sector, Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co (NAS: LEND) dropped $2.76 to $6.15 after it said it had filed suit against Lone Star Fund V and two of its affiliates to try to get the private equity firm to live up to its agreement to take over the troubled mortgage lender after Lone Star said on Friday that Accredited did not meet the conditions of the offer.

Accredited said that without the takeover deal, it could have to file for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) dropped $1.62 to $178.88.

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 slightly at mid-session on Friday after gains on Thursday as the Federal Reserve announced yet another interest rate hike. But, while the markets slumped after starting strongly again Friday morning, they still looked to end the week with gains overall.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 9.44 points lower at mid-session, to 11.181.36, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.2 percent to 2,170.39 and the S&P 500 was only 0.3 points lower, to 1,272.57. However, the Dow was on track to see a gain of 1.7 percent this week, while the Nasdaq and the S&P were each up 2.3 percent on the week. The quarterly news wasn’t as good. While the Dow managed an 0.6 percent rise in the second quarter, the S&P was 1.7 percent lower in the quarter and the Nasdaq has fallen 7.2 percent since the end of March. Those figures leave the Dow up 4.3 percent in the first half of the year, the S&P up 1.9 percent in the first half, and the Nasdaq 1.6 percent lower. The losses in the Nasdaq reflect the difficulties that technology stocks have had so far this year.

That trouble in the technology sector was reflected in the week’s activity for data storage system maker EMC Corp and flash memory products manufacturer Micron Technology. EMC and Micron each dropped 8.6 percent on the week, to $10.54 and $15.00 respectively. EMC’s investors were concerned that it had offered to much to purchase IT security company RSA Security, while Micron’s stockholders were not happy with its quarterly report.

On the other hand, chipmaker Intel added 5.7 percent during the week to $19.02 on the launch of a new microprocessor for computer servers and the news that it has sold its unit to make chips for hand-held devices to Marvell Technology.

In the automobile manufacturing sector, General Motors added 7 percent ton the week to $28.86 after dropping substantially on Tuesday when it said that sales in 2006 would be below 2005 levels. But receipt of a letter from investor Kirk Kerkorian on Friday that said Renault and Nissan are both interested in purchasing stakes in GM sent shares higher.

ExxonMobil added 6.8 percent on the week to $62.05 as crude oil prices were on the rise again.