Stocks were little changed on Friday with the Dow on track to post its ninth straight winning week after data showed the economic expansion gathered speed in the fourth quarter.

The economy grew at a 3.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter as consumer spending accelerated. Excluding inventories, however, sales grew about 7.1 percent, the best since 1984, according to government data.

The economic report helped stocks recover from weak results from Ford and Amazon.

When you look at the components of the GDP number, it was a high-quality report because it lays the groundwork for further economic growth down the line, said Mark Bronzo, a money manager at Security Global Investors in Irvington, New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 1.74 points, or 0.01 percent, at 11,991.57. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was down 0.19 points, or 0.01 percent, at 1,299.35.

The Nasdaq 100 tracking exchange-traded fund was down 0.24 percent at 57.04.

Nasdaq officials said they were investigating an outage on its global index data service, which is affecting index quote dissemination. The Nasdaq 100 tracking exchange-traded fund was down 0.1 percent at 57.08.

Ford Motor Co slumped 8.1 percent to $17.26 after a steep drop in quarterly profit due to a charge for debt payments. Rival automaker General Motors Co lost 2.8 percent to $37.55.

Ford was clearly disappointing, and the fact that it has been up so much lately is exacerbating the fall today, Bronzo said. Ford shares rose almost 12 percent from the start of January to Thursday's closing price.

Dow component Microsoft Corp fell 1.6 percent to $28.43 a day after it posted a dip in profit, and online retailer Amazon.com Inc recorded revenue below the consensus view. The stock shed 7.5 percent to $170.64.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers' final January consumer sentiment fell slightly in the final December reading, but topped forecasts. Equities were little changed by the data.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)