Stock market has best week of 2012

Stock market has best week of 2012

Stocks rose for the fourth day in a row Friday, capping their best week so far this year.

It was a relief for investors after the big drops of the previous week.

Stocks fell in morning trading, with the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 63 points. But they turned around after the government said businesses are restocking their shelves faster than analysts had expected.

The Commerce Department said U.S. wholesale stockpiles grew 0.6 percent in April. That’s twice as fast as they grew in March and a sign that businesses are ordering enough goods to lead to increased factory production and sales. Investors had been braced for more-sluggish growth.

Oil fell 72 cents to $84.10 per barrel. Sure, it was pushed down by long-term economic worries. But lower energy costs help consumers.

US trade deficit narrows to $50.1B

WASHINGTON

The U.S. trade deficit shrank in April, but only because a big drop in imports offset the first decline in U.S. exports in five months.

The Commerce Department said Friday that the trade deficit narrowed 4.9 percent in April to $50.1 billion.

U.S. exports, which had hit a record the previous month, fell 0.8 percent to $182.9 billion. Sales of everything from commercial jetliners to industrial machinery declined.

Imports, which also set a record in March, dropped an even faster 1.7 percent to $233 billion.

The trade gap remains wide and could weigh on growth in the April-June quarter. A wider trade gap slows growth because it means the United States is spending more on foreign-made products than it is taking in from sales of U.S.-made goods.

The slip in exports is especially troublesome because it shows the weaker global economy is dampening demand for American-made goods. Export sales declined to Europe, China and Brazil.

Google wins partial repeal of ruling

GENEVA

Switzerland’s supreme court has ruled that Google doesn’t need to be perfect when it comes to privacy.

The Internet giant has won a partial repeal of a lower-court decision that required the company to guarantee absolute anonymity for people pictured in its popular Street View service.

“It must be accepted that up to a maximum of 1 percent of the images uploaded are insufficiently anonymized,” the Swiss Federal Tribunal said in a statement Friday.

The court said Google still has to make it easy for people to have their images manually blurred and must ensure total anonymity in sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals, women’s shelters and courts, where skin color and clothing also must be obscured.

From wire reports