Tech Stocks Leave Blue Chips Behind

Updated from 4:13 p.m. EST

Tech shares climbed while blue chips sagged Friday, leaving Wall Street mixed as a mostly negative week for the market came to a close.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 11.82 points, or 0.52%, at 2304.85, thanks to gains in Cognizant Technology (CTSH Quote) and Amazon.com (AMZN Quote).

Shares of Cognizant soared 16.7% to $31.84 after the company posted strong fourth-quarter earnings, and Amazon gained 3.7% to $73.50 on word it would buy back $1 billion worth of stock over the next two years.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 64.87 points, or 0.53%, at 12,182.13. The S&P 500 lost 5.62 points, or 0.42%, at 1331.29.

Breadth was poor. On the New York Stock Exchange 3.56 billion shares changed hands, as decliners beat advancers by nearly a 5-to-3 margin. Volume on the Nasdaq reached 2.23 billion shares, with losers edging winners 8 to 7.

The uneven session punctuated a losing week for the major averages, one that reversed the strong gains of the week before. The Dow dropped 4.4%, its worst performance in more than five years. The S&P 500 fell 4.6%, and the Nasdaq slid 4.5% over the five sessions.

"The market has been back and forth an awful lot this week," said Edgar Peters, chief investment officer with Pan Agora. "We don't know what the value of information is, and that's leading to a lot of ambiguity. We're going to see a lot more volatility until this ambiguity recedes."

There was little in the way of earnings helping to support buyers. After Thursday's close, video-game maker Activision (ATVI Quote) said third-quarter profit jumped 90% to beat expectations. Activision tacked on 40 cents, or 1.5%, to $26.69.

Ahead of the new session, Weyerhaeuser (WY Quote) said it swung to a fourth-quarter loss of 30 cents a share. Excluding items, the company beat the Thomson First Call average estimate, although revenue fell short of targets. Weyerhaeuser was off $2.37, or 3.7%, to $62.34.

Meanwhile, Alcatel Lucent (ALU Quote) posted a quarterly loss and eliminated its dividend, and the networker offered a downbeat forecast for 2008. Alcatel eased 25 cents, or 4%, to close at $6.

Away from earnings, McDonald's (MCD Quote) said same-store sales rose 5.7% in January, helped by strong growth overseas. Shares added $1.18, or 2.2%, to $55.64.

On the economic front, the lone report of the day came from the Census Bureau, which said wholesale inventories rose a greater-than-expected 1.1% in December. Economists expected that the data would show a 0.3% increase.

Traders were also digesting comments from San Francisco Federal Reserve president Janet Yellen, who said it is "most probable that the U.S. economy will experience slow, sluggish growth, and not outright recession, in coming quarters."

Her remarks came around the same time that Congress was passing a $168 billion fiscal stimulus plan designed to ensure that consumers continue spending, a proposal supporters hope will take the recession option off the table altogether. Under the plan, most individuals will get tax rebates of up to $600. Couples who file jointly can get as much as $1,200.

Treasury prices rallied sharply on recessionary fears. The 10-year note was jumped 31/32 in price to yield 3.64%. The 30-year bond was higher by 1-14/32, pushing the yield down to 4.42%.

Elsewhere, commodity prices were on the rise. Crude oil surged $3.66 to end the day at $91.77 a barrel, and gold futures jumped $12.30 to close at $922.30 an ounce.

Overseas markets were mixed. In Asia, where many markets are closed for a holiday, Japan's Nikkei 225 slid 1.4%. Among European bourses, the Paris CAC 40 dropped 0.3%, while both the London FTSE 100 and Germany's Xetra Dax added 0.5%.