Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares surged Thursday on rumors of a Kindle deal with Target (NYSE: TGT), while the rest of the market edged higher ahead of first quarter earnings reports.
Amazon jumped 4.5 percent after Engadget reported that the Kindle may be coming to Target. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which recently released its rival iPad amid great fanfare, ended down slightly on the day.
The rest of the market edged higher on stronger than expected retail sales that raised hopes ahead of the start of earnings reports. Next week will see earnings news from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) on Tuesday and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) on Thursday, among other companies.
Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) gained around 2 percent each.
But chip stocks and data storage stocks were weak.
A warning from Compellent (NYSE: CML) hit the data storage sector, with 3PAR (NYSE: PAR) and QLogic (NASDAQ: QLGC) also down on the news.
Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and ON Semi (NASDAQ: ONNN) led chip stocks lower.
eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) slipped 1.5 percent on a downgrade, while BMC (NYSE: BMC) gained 2.7 percent on an upgrade.