More gains for US stocks on Friday sent Wall Street to its latest record, milestone, and winning week.
- The S&P 500 rose 28.70 points, or 0.6%, to 5,026.61, the first time it's closed above 5,000.
- The Dow fell 54.64 points, or 0.1%, to 38,671.69.
- The Nasdaq rose 196.95 points, or 1.2%, to 15,990.66, within 0.4% of its all-time high, set in 2021.
Milestones like the S&P 500 at 5,000 don't carry much weight for a market that's supposed to move on hard numbers like interest rates, profits, and revenue, per the AP. But they can juice up the animal spirits of a market that can also be prone to emotional moves. Wall Street's rally got going with hopes that cooling inflation would get the Federal Reserve to dial down the pressure by cutting interest rates. Lately, such cuts look to be coming later than hoped because reports keep showing a remarkably solid economy. But that strength has in turn raised expectations for profits from companies, supporting stocks.
Cloudflare was the latest company to soar after reporting stronger profit than analysts expected for its latest quarter. The cloud services company jumped 19.5% after it said it signed both its largest new customer and its largest renewal ever, despite an overall economic environment that "remains challenging to predict." Big Tech stocks did the market's heavy lifting, as they have for more than a year, in part on mania around artificial intelligence technology. Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon were the strongest forces lifting the S&P after each rose by at least 1.6%. They helped offset a 3.6% drop for PepsiCo, which reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It said growth is slowing because customers are getting back to their snacking and other behaviors from before the pandemic.
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