Wall Street opens with gains; Microsoft jumps

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose at the open on Friday lifted by Microsoft shares, which shot up more than 8 percent on news its Chief Executive Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 26.87 points or 0.18 percent, to 14,990.61, the S&P 500 gained 4.87 points or 0.29 percent, to 1,661.83 and the Nasdaq Composite added 20.659 points or 0.57 percent, to 3,659.367.

Trader attention was focused on the Nasdaq exchange, which appeared to open normally for trading after a three hour outage Thursday afternoon.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski)