Wall Street gains on Amazon boost, robust GDP data

By Amy Caren Daniel

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday as bumper earnings from Amazon lifted consumer discretionary stocks and data showed that the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly four years.

A Commerce Department report showed that gross domestic product increased at a 4.1 percent annualized rate in the second quarter as consumers boosted spending and farmers rushed shipments of soybeans to China to beat retaliatory trade tariffs.

Amazon.com jumped as much as 4 percent to hit a record high of $1,880, the biggest boost to the Nasdaq and the S&P 500.

The rise in the online retailer's shares also led the consumer discretionary sector 0.79 percent higher.

"At the end of the day, it really is about what is truly going on in the market and what is truly going on is earnings," said J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.

"There just seems to be a lot of evidence the economy is really humming right along. The only part of the economy that seems to be struggling is wages. But everything else, it is really hard to argue with."

Earnings of S&P 500 companies are now expected to rise 22.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with an estimate of 20.7 percent as of July 1, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Only four of the 11 main S&P sectors were lower, with technology's 0.5 percent drop the steepest.

Intel's 7.9 percent drop was the biggest drag on Wall Street's main indexes after its fast-growing data center business missed estimates.

Advanced Micro Devices, which is expected to have eaten into Intel's market share, was up 5.2 percent.

Twitter plunged 16.3 percent after reporting fewer-than-expected monthly active users and warning that the closely-watched figure could keep falling as it deletes phony accounts.

At 9:58 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 18.65 points, or 0.07 percent, at 25,545.72, the S&P 500 was down 0.78 points, or 0.03 percent, at 2,836.66 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 6.47 points, or 0.08 percent, at 7,845.72.

Exxon Mobil dropped 3.6 percent, while Chevron fell 0.8 percent and weighed on energy companies after their quarterly results fell far short of Street's expectations.

Chesapeake Energy jumped 8.2 percent after it planned to sell all of its Ohio natural gas acreage to privately owned Encino Acquisition Partners for about $2 billion.

Electronic Arts fell 6.7 percent after the game publisher forecast tepid second-quarter revenue growth.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.23-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 1.30-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded 20 new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 56 new highs and 32 new lows.

(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Charles Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)