Friday 12.23.16 U.S. equities closed mostly flat on Friday ahead of the Christmas holiday, as the Dow Jones industrial average failed again to reach the psychologically important level of 20,000. The Dow closed about 15 points higher, with UnitedHealth contributing the most gains. “This is the last full trading week of the year. The Dow…

Cloud computing drives massive growth for big U.S. tech firms SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Alphabet Corp’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Intel Corp (INTC.O) are all putting their chips on the cloud computing business, and it is booming. All four companies posted stellar quarterly earnings on Thursday, showing the strength of…

We are still in the heart of earning season and a lot can change. But so far, it appears the earnings recession is over and that bodes well for the major indices. Here’s a Snap Shot of Q4 Earnings… So Far Earnings growth for the SPX the third quarter is 5.6% vs expectations of 4.5%…