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Nasdaq Leads Quiet Session; PayPal, Grubhub, Domino's Jump On Earnings

X The Nasdaq composite led an uneventful session Thursday as Wall Street focused on another avalanche of earnings reports.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Home Depot (HD) outperformed in the Dow with gains of around 1% each. Nasdaq 100 leaders included Intuit (INTU), Xilinx (XLNX) and PayPal (PYPL), with gains ranging from 6% to 8%.

The Nasdaq composite led the way, helped in part by strength in chip-equipment stocks, up 0.4%. The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 added less than 0.1%, weighed down by weakness in financials and oil and gas stocks. Preliminary data showed volume on the NYSE and Nasdaq coming in very close to Wednesday's levels.

At the New York Mercantile Exchange, benchmark WTI crude oil futures settled near a four-week low, falling 0.9% to $49.18 a barrel.

After the close, shares of Amazon.com (AMZN) jumped 4% after reporting earnings. Wall Street also eyed earnings from Alphabet (GOOGL), Fortinet (FTNT) and Western Digital (WDC).

In the stock market today, Grubhub (GRUB) was a big winner, up nearly 23% to 42.95. First-quarter earnings and sales growth accelerated nicely from the fourth quarter, up 45% and 39% respectively. GrubHub's technical health improved quite a bit with a bullish gap above the 200-day moving average. It's only 3.7% off its high of 44.58 now.

PayPal also had a good day, up 6% to 47.15. Headed into Thursday, it was still within buy range from a 43.90 buy point, but it's extended now. PayPal's Venmo social payment system has been a hit with the millennial crowd. It's basically a digital wallet that lets users make and share payments with friends. PayPal stock was unfazed by news that Apple (AAPL) is developing a similar product.

Domino's Pizza (DPZ) gapped above its 50-day moving average, rising 2.5% to 185.55 on strong earnings. Its current flat base shows an early entry at 187.98.

LogMeIn (LOGM) was a big gainer in the IBD 50, rising 3% to 113.50. It's been moving higher ahead of its May 4 earnings report after the close, but is still in buy range from a 110.10 buy point.

Heavy-volume earnings gainers included enterprise software name ServiceNow (NOW) and small cap chip-equipment firm Ultra Clean Holdings (UCTT).

ServiceNow gapped out of a base with a 94.82 buy point but ended slightly below the buy point. Shares rose nearly 4% to 94.32.

Ultra Clean jumped 13% but it's well extended in price after a huge run-up in recent months. Other big gainers in the chip-equipment group were MKS Instruments (MKSI) and Teradyne (TER), up 5% and 8%, respectively.

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