Stocks re­sem­bled sum­mer va­ca­tion­ers yes­ter­day, ris­ing not-too-im­pres­sive­ly in the morn­ing and then most­ly lay­ing around for the rest of the day. Pos­i­tive news from re­tail­ers was the main rea­son US in­dex­es post­ed small gains. Ap­ple helped too by hit­ting a new high. Traders in both the US and Eu­rope are on va­ca­tion, so vol­umes were low. And the dog days con­tin­ued for Face­book. A four per cent de­cline left its shares at about half the price of its May ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing.

The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age rose 25.09 points to close at 13,275.20. The Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex rose 2.65 points to close at 1,418.16. The Nas­daq rose 14.20 points to close at 3,076.59. The mod­est gains put some in­dex­es close to their highs for the year. The Dow is now with­in four points of 13,279, its high for the year set on May 1. The S&P 500 is with­in one point of its four-year high set on April 1.

The Dow has now risen eight out of the last 11 days and fin­ished the week up a half-per-cent. The Dow is sport­ing a gain for the year of al­most 8.7 per cent for the year, while the S&P 500 is up al­most 12.7 per cent. Next week is like­ly to be more event­ful.

In­vestors will get Chi­nese hous­ing re­ports, min­utes from a close­ly-watched Fed­er­al Re­serve meet­ing, and job­less claims. And Eu­rope's prob­lems, which were most­ly off cen­tre stage in re­cent days, re­turn front-and-cen­tre as Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel meets in Berlin with Greek Prime Min­is­ter An­to­nis Sama­ras to talk about progress in over­com­ing Greece's debt cri­sis.

"Next week, you have some­body say some­thing that no one ex­pects, in thin trad­ing it could re­al­ly move mar­kets around," said John Canal­ly, in­vest­ment strate­gist at LPL Fi­nan­cial. Strong re­tail earn­ings and out­looks drove yes­ter­day's gains. Gap Inc shares rose 4.8 per cent af­ter it boost­ed its out­look and post­ed a 29 per cent jump in net in­come. That sug­gests the op­er­a­tor of Gap, Old Navy and Ba­nana Re­pub­lic stores is fi­nal­ly on the way to a turn­around.

Tech­nol­o­gy stocks saw both highs and lows yes­ter­day. Ap­ple hit an all-time high, ris­ing al­most two per cent to US$648.11. It now has a mar­ket val­ue of about US$608 bil­lion, al­most 50 per cent high­er than No 2 Exxon Mo­bil at US$408 bil­lion. But de­clines con­tin­ued for Face­book and Groupon, the on­line coupon com­pa­ny.

Face­book closed at US$19, about half the val­ue of its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing price of US$38. In­vestors are wor­ried that mo­bile ads won't bring in as much mon­ey as those seen on desk­top com­put­ers. And Face­book's short-term prob­lems in­clude the ex­pi­ra­tion of a lock-up pe­ri­od on Thurs­day that had kept ear­ly in­vestors from sell­ing.

AP