Microsoft stock surges, provides biggest boost to the Dow’s price

Shares of Microsoft Corp. surged 3.7% in morning trading Monday, to provide the biggest point boost among Dow Jones Industrial Average’s components. The software behemoth’s stock price gain of $8.55 added about 56 points to the Dow’s price, while the Dow rallied 545 points, or 1.8%. Microsoft’s stock rally comes even after Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz trimmed his price target to $320 from $340, saying “caution flags remain” for the software sector as “healthy” fundamentals butts heads with “uneven” demand. The other three point boosts were from the stocks of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. s[: gs], Salesforce Inc. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. , which added a combined 123 points to the Dow. Only one Dow stock fell, with Amgen Inc. down 95 cents to act as a 6-point drag on the index.

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