Chip Stocks Left Out of Rally

Stocks surged Friday on hopes for economic recovery, but chip stocks were conspicuously absent from the rally.

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) tumbled 14% despite beating estimates, as investors focused on much weaker than expected gross margins, evidence of pricing pressures.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (PHI: SOX) lost 2%, with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) also ending the day lower.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) continued to slump ahead of its earnings report later this month, but Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) rose 2.7% on a Bernstein upgrade.

eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and EMC (NYSE: EMC) were other gainers, while IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) lost ground.

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) slipped 0.5% on news that Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) is facing some legal issues.

VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI) surged on their results, while Brooks Automation (NASDAQ: BRKS) and International Rectifier (NYSE: IRF) slumped on their earnings reports.

The broader market surged on better than expected news about the government’s “stress tests” of banks and a monthly government jobs report that wasn’t as bad as feared, as the report benefited from 72,000 new government jobs.

The Nasdaq rose 22 to 1739, the S&P 500 gained 21 to 929, and the Dow surged 164 to 8574. Volume declined to 8.16 billion shares on the NYSE, and 3.2 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 31-5 margin on the NYSE, and 21-7 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 88% on the NYSE, and 62% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 29-72 on the NYSE, and 29-17 on the Nasdaq.