Dow soars
132.87 to record

NEW YORK - Stock prices posted strong gains today as investors, reacting to encouraging earnings reports, returned to the Internet and pharmaceutical issues that were beaten down earlier this week.

The Dow Jones industrials, which rallied strongly in the final 20 minutes of trading, rose 132.87 to close at a record 10,581.42.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 29.95 to 1,336.12, and the Nasdaq composite gained 79.44 to 2,489.08.

Advancers led decliners by 3 to 2 on the New York Stock Exchange, where 1,937 stocks were up, 1,089 fell and 498 were unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 919.16 million shares vs. 984.06 million yesterday.

The NYSE composite index rose 12.87 to 633.71; the American Stock Exchange composite index advanced 13.61 to 750.59; and the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 11.23 to 426.57.

The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond fell 3/32 point, or 94 cents per $1,000 bond, to yield 5.52 percent, up from 5.51 percent yesterday.

After the stock market closed today, IBM Corp. easily surpassed Wall Street projections by announcing that its first-quarter earnings jumped 42 percent to $1.47 billion as software and service revenues surged. In the three months ended March 31, IBM earned $1.55 a share, compared to earnings of $1.03 billion, or $1.06 a share, in the same period a year ago. Analysts surveyed by First Call Corp. had predicted earnings of $1.41 a share for the Armonk, N.Y.-based company.