Alphabet and Microsoft push Wall Street toward its first winning week in a month Boston 25 News [Video]

NEW YORK — (AP) — Alphabet and Microsoft are leading the U.S. stock market on Friday toward the finish of its first winning week in the last four.

The S&P 500 was 1.1% higher in afternoon trading and on track for its best week since November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 166 points, or 0.4%, as of 12:29 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% higher.

Alphabet jumped 10.4% after breezing past analysts’ expectations for profit last quarter. The parent company of Google also said it will start paying a dividend to investors and authorized a program to buy back up to $70 billion of its stock, a signal of how much cash it’s generating.

Microsoft, meanwhile, climbed 2.4% after reporting stronger profit and revenue than expected. It cited strong growth in its cloud-computing business as it pushes artificial-intelligence technology to its customers.

They helped offset a 9.7% drop for Intel. It reported …