Some of the largest financial companies also climbed. Bank of America advanced 4.9 percent to $6.80. JPMorgan added 4.7 percent to $36.54.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp. fell 4.6 percent to $20.30. The world's biggest custody bank said fourth-quarter earnings declined 26 percent on a restructuring charge and lower revenue from businesses tied to financial markets.
Sales Forecast
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index surged 5 percent as all of its 30 stocks advanced. Linear Technology Corp. jumped 12 percent, the most in the S&P 500, to $33.32. The maker of semiconductors for industrial equipment and cars forecast fiscal third-quarter sales that would beat analysts' estimates.
Yahoo! Inc. gained 3.2 percent to $15.92 as Jerry Yang's exit may remove a barrier to find a buyer or negotiate a sale of stakes in Asian assets valued at more than $10 billion. Now that the co-founder and one-time chief executive officer has cut his leadership ties to Yahoo, newly appointed CEO Scott Thompson has freer rein to unwind the company's part-ownership of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan Corp.
U.S. companies that beat analysts' earnings estimates are an exception, rather than the rule, for the fourth-quarter reporting season getting under way. Only 47.1 percent of companies in the S&P 500 that posted quarterly results between Dec. 1 and yesterday exceeded the average projection, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Financial Crisis
So-called positive surprises have surpassed 50 percent at a comparable point in every other quarterly reporting period for the past four years. The previous low was 51.5 percent in the third quarter of 2008, when a global financial crisis was taking hold.
"Early reporters' results" are one of two reasons to expect the current earnings season to be disappointing, Thomas M. Doerflinger, a strategist at UBS AG, wrote yesterday in a report. The other is that many companies are likely to cut estimates for this year.