Wall Street was mixed at midday on Friday as some quarterly reports failed to inspire investors.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.21 percent lower to 12,541.50, while the Nasdaq Composite had added 0.04 percent to 2,444.11 and the S&P 500 was 0.11 percent higher to 1,427.87.

IBM dropped $3.82 to $95.63 even though it reported profits that were better than anticipated in the fourth quarter.  A portion of the increase in profits was due to a change in IBM’s tax rates.  Meanwhile, General Electric dropped 79 cents to $37.21 on disappointing results in its fiscal first quarter.

Citigroup also saw declines, with its share price dropping 34 cents to $54.05 due to a 26 percent decrease in profits in the fourth quarter.

Motorola added 67 cents to $19.38.  It had warned in January that its fourth quarter profits would not meet expectations due to discounts on mobile phones.  And, indeed, its earnings were lower, but turned out to be better than the warnings had led investors to expect.

Mergers and acquisitions also played into the days results.  Morgan Stanley added 55 cents to $81.76 after its real estate unit said it would buy hotel real-estate investment trust CNL Hotel & Resorts, spending $3.13 billion on the transaction.  Abbott Laboratories added 61 cents to $53.40, its highest share price in a year, after it said it will sell part of its medical testing division to General Electric.

Wall Street was down on Friday and both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 looked set to end the week down as well, although the Nasdaq Composite was likely to notch a gain for the week. The Dow had lost 0.7 percent by midday to 12,388.96, down 0.6 on the week despite hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday. The S&P was 0.8 percent lower on the session so far and 0.7 percent lower for the week at 1,407.94. While the Nasdaq was 1.1 lower over the session at midday, to 2,425.36, it was still up 0.4 percent on the shortened week.

The oil sector performed particularly badly as crude oil prices dropped over the week. Chevron was 4.4 percent lower to $70.32, while ExxonMobil dropped 5.6 percent to $72.34. ConocoPhillips was down 7.8 percent to $66.35 as it dropped its marketing and refining margins for the fourth quarter. Marathon Oil fell 8.5 percent over the week to $84.60.

Homebuilders saw declines. KB Homes dropped 4.4 percent to $49.03. Lennar was 4.8 percent lower to $49.92 after it said it would probably see a loss in the fourth quarter.

Technology stocks did better for the most part, although Motorola dropped 7.8 percent on the week to $18.95 after it said that fourth quarter earnings would be below predictions due to slow mobile phone sales. Chipmaker Intel added 3 percent to $20.86. Cisco was up 3.1 percent to $28.19 on the announcement that it has bought an e-mail security company. Internet search engine Yahoo gained 7 percent to $27.32, while BMC Software added 7.6 percent to $34.65.

Home improvement retailers did not seem affected much by the drop in the home construction sector. While Home Depot held steady at $41.84 for the week, Lowes added 2.9 percent to $32.04.

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 virtually flat at midday on Thursday as some quarterly reports did not live up to expectations. At mid-session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped just 2.64 points to 11,008.78 and the S&P 500 dropped less than a point to 1,269.66. The Nasdaq Composite saw bigger losses, dropping 0.7 percent to 2,067.87.

Not all the earnings reports were disappointing. Apple Computer reported that its second-quarter profits were up 48 percent on sales of Macintosh computers and iPods. Shares in Apple were up 12.3 percent by noon to $60.73, but that still left the computer maker down 15.8 percent since the beginning of the year.

Motorola was ahead of expectations with its report that earnings were up 48 percent in the second quarter due to record handset sales. Shares advanced by 10.3 percent to $21.23.

Safeway added 7.6 percent to $27.63 on a report of profits that were 84 percent higher than last year during the same period.

Intel dropped 4.8 percent to $17.61 after it said that lower chip prices resulted in a 57 percent drop in profits in the second quarter. The chipmaker’s chief financial officer said that yearly sales would probably not meet estimates made in April.

Meanwhile, Johnson Controls dropped 10.2 percent $73 even though its earnings in the second quarter were up.

The New York equities markets were up on Wednesday as more companies turned in strong quarterly earnings reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day 0.1 percent higher to 11,278.77, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.6 percent to 2,370.88 and the S&P 500 added 0.2 percent to 1,309.93.

Internet search engines advanced on the day. Despite reporting lower earnings than last year, Yahoo gained 7.2 percent to $33.54 as revenues and adjusted earnings reached predicted levels. Yahoo’s gains in turn helped Google up 1.6 percent to $410.50 ahead of its quarterly earnings report.

In the semiconductor sector, Texas Instruments reported second-quarter earnings that were well above forecasts, adding 1.3 percent to $34.45 after a gain of 3.8 percent on Tuesday. Meanwhile, United Technologies was up 6.6 percent to $62.80 on an upgrade from “netural” to “buy” from Merrill Lynch.

Also in quarterly reports, JP Morgan Chase said that its first quarter net income was up by 36 percent. However, the report was good for only an 0.1 percent rise in share price, to $42.62.

Mobile phone maker Motorola dropped 6.6 percent to $22.49 eve though strong sales pushed its market share up by 5 percent.

At midday on Wednesday, the New York equities markets had made back some of Tuesday’s losses, helped out by good news on the trade deficit and out of several corporations. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 11,123.24 by mid-session, a gain of 0.3 percent, and the S&P 500 had gained 0.1 percent to 1,287.15. The Nasdaq Composite, however, held steady at 2,310.07.

In the telecommunications sector, Motorola added 1.3 percent to $23.87 on an upgrade from Bear Stearns on the theory that the company would continue to increase its share of the market because of demand for its thin handsets.

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing was up 3.7 percent to $83.53 on a deal to sell 80 of its 737 jets to China. This was Boeing’s largest one-day increase in two months.

In the automobile manufacturing sector, General Motors added 2.2 percent to $19.65, also on news related to China. GM said that sales of it’s Chevrolet line in China will increase by at least 50 percent this year. Ford Motor also saw an advance on the day, by 1 percent to $7.24.

In the retail sector, Circuit City added 2.3 percent to $25.18 after is said that its fourth-quarter profits were up by 65 percent on Christmas sales of digital music players and flat-panel televisions.

Biotechnology group Genentech was down 1.1 percent to $80.84 despite a 48 percent rise in profits in the first quarter after ales of its drug Rituzan did not meet expectations.

Bosch & Lomb dropped 4.7 percent to $46.75, seeing declines for the second day in a row after having to withdraw its contact lens solution due to reports that some users had contracted fungal infections.

The New York equities markets were mostly down by early afternoon on Thursday despite gains in the telecommunications and metal-mining sectors. The Nasdaq Composite was about even after declines earlier in the day, at 2,338.64. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.6 percent to 11,153.18 on concerns in several sectors over interest rates. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 dropped 0.1 percent after gains earlier in the day to 1,301.15.

When Morgan Stanley upped its forecast on metals prices, miners and metal companies saw gains. Phelps Dodge added 5.4 percent to $81.21 on an upgrade from “equal-weight” to “overweight”. Upgrades also took aluminium companies Alcan and Alcoa up 0.5 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, with Alcan trading at $46.76 and Alcoa’s shares selling at $30.91.

The mobile phone portion of the telecommunications sector saw advances after Nokia said it believes that global handset sales will go up 15 percent this year. It had previously put the sales estimate at 10 percent. Nokia added 4 percent on the news, to $21.02, while Motorola gained 1.8 percent to $23.17. Texas Instruments, which makes chips for mobile phones, was up 3.1 percent to $32.97. Qualcomm advanced by 0.8 percent to $51.13.

Internet company Google, added to the S&P 500 today, dropped 2.3 percent to $385.88 on the announcement that it will issue 5.3 million new shares in association with its addition to the index. Before today’s losses, Google had added 15.5 percent since Thursday.