Stocks Rocket on Google, Citi Results

An unexpected earnings blowout from Google and results from Citigroup that weren’t as bad as feared sent stocks soaring on Friday.

Google shares soared 20%, or nearly $90, to $539.41, its best one-day gain ever. Surprisingly strong results from IBM, Intel and Google and the lack of complete disasters at financials like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup sent major indexes surging to multi-month highs this week, as investors began to look past the credit market meltdown to economic recovery. In the process, the Dow Jones Industrial Average cleared an important level.

AMD lost ground, though, shedding 1.3% on a wider than expected loss of 59 cents a share. The company’s sales of $1.5 billion were in line with its lowered guidance earlier this month, and gross margins of 42% were better than expected.

But the biggest moves of the day were to the upside.

Overstock soared 33% on its results, and PMC-Sierra, SanDisk and Amdocs were other earnings winners.

Apple, Amazon, Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Microsoft, all of which will report their quarterly results next week, posted strong gains.

Yahoo added 1.4% ahead of results Tuesday night that could make or break its bid to remain independent in the wake of a takeover bid from Microsoft.

Raining Data soared 40% on a new search product and a name change to TigerLogic.

The Nasdaq soared 61 to 2402, the S&P gained 24 to 1390, and the Dow surged 229 to 12,849. Volume rose to 4.19 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.23 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 26-7 margin on the NYSE, and by a 21-8 margin on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 80% on the NYSE, and 83% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 137-68 on the NYSE, and 79-84 on the Nasdaq.