Friday's Financial Winners & Losers

Financial stocks were mixed Friday but, on the whole, they performed slightly better than the broader market.

Tax preparer H&R Block (HRB Quote) helped buoy the sector, leaping 3.7% to $22.64 after agreeing to sell its subprime lending unit, Option One Mortgage, to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

First-quarter results continued filing in as well, with American Express (AXP Quote) climbing 2.8% to $60.58 after sailing past top- and bottom-line projections. The credit-card company posted continuing-operations profits that were 25.7% higher year over year at 88 cents a share, or $1.07 billion, on revenue of $7.63 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were seeking 80 cents a share on $7.17 billion in revenue.

In other positive earnings news, Denver's Centennial Bank (CBHI Quote) lifted by 4.4% to $8.59 after topping first-quarter targets by 2 cents a share, and First Data (FDC Quote) gained slightly at $32.55 on a penny EPS beat.

Also on the rise today were NYSE Financial Index components UBS (UBS Quote), lately up 3.4% to $64.32; IntercontinentalExchange (ICE Quote), which added 2.8% at $133.35; SWS Group (SWS Quote), higher by 2.5% to $27.41; and Chicago Board of Trade (BOT Quote), which tacked on 2.3% to $196.79 a day after posting better-than-expected first-quarter financials.

Accordingly, the NYSE index was recently up by 0.7% to 9,830.35. But the KBW Bank Index, which houses a much smaller list of big financial-services firms, was dampened by poor first-quarter results from both Capital One (COF Quote) and Zions Bancorp (ZION Quote). The tracker inched up only slightly to 116.96.