A widespread rally swept Wall Street on Friday, lifting far-reaching corners, to close a tumultuous week during which stocks that had been left behind for much of this year’s record-setting run wrested the spotlight back from the market’s biggest stars.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 jumped 1.1% for its best day in seven weeks after 3M and several other big companies delivered better profits for the spring than analysts expected. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 654 points, or 1.6%, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 1%.
The market’s widespread gains included rallies for both Big Tech behemoths and smaller stocks. That’s a departure from recent trading, during which a divide deepened between the handful of elite stocks that dominated the market for much of this year and almost everyone else.
Nvidia rose 0.7% to trim its loss for the week to 4.1%. Most of the other members of the small group of stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” also climbed, clawing back some of their losses from earlier in the week.
They were under pressure after the latest profit reports from Tesla and Alphabet raised worries that investors had gotten carried away in their frenzy around artificial intelligence technology and taken Magnificent Seven prices too high. Because those seven stocks are so massive, they were the main reason the S&P 500 set dozens of all-time highs this year, and they masked weakness elsewhere in the market.
As those Big Tech stocks atop the market’s leaderboard tumbled, formerly downtrodden areas of the market turned higher, and that momentum kept rolling Friday. The Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks climbed 1.7%, bringing its gain for the month so far to 10.4%. That towers over the roughly flat performance for the big stocks in the S&P 500.
Industrial companies and other businesses whose profits are closely tied to the strength of the economy also rallied. They had lagged earlier this year under the weight of high interest rates meant to get inflation under control.
Norfolk Southern rose 10.9%, erasing what had been a loss for the year so far, after the rail company reported better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It got a boost from insurance payments related to last year’s disastrous East Palestine derailment. The company also made progress in reducing its expenses and improving efficiency.
3M leaped 23% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind the Scotch-Brite and Nexcare brands also raised the bottom end of its forecast range for profit for the full year.
Market watchers have been hoping for just such a broadening of gains because a market with many stocks rising is seen as healthier than one lifted by just a handful of dominating elites.
Stocks broadly got a boost from Friday’s latest update on inflation, which further cemented investors’ expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.
U.S. consumers paid prices in June that were 2.5% higher than a year earlier, down from May’s inflation rate of 2.6%, the Commerce Department said Friday. That’s according to the personal consumption expenditures index, to which the Federal Reserve pays more attention than the consumer price index, or CPI.
With inflation resuming its slowdown after a discouraging start to the year, traders are banking on a 100% probability the Fed will begin easing its main interest rate in September, according to data from CME Group. The Fed has been keeping its federal funds rate at the highest level in more than two decades.
“Income growth is slow, spending growth is moderating, goods prices are in deflation, service price inflation is tame,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “If this doesn’t give the Fed confidence to cut, nothing will.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.19% from 4.25% late Thursday and from 4.70% in April. That’s a significant move for the bond market and offers support for stock prices.
Among the other winners on Wall Street, where nearly 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 rose, Deckers Outdoors climbed 6.3% after breezing past Wall Street’s earnings expectations on the strength of its Ugg and Hoka brands of footwear. The California company also raised its full-year profit forecast.
Newell Brands soared 40.5% after the owner of Coleman camping supplies and Sharpie markers easily topped analysts’ profit targets.
Among the relatively few stocks to drop was DexCom, which tumbled 40.7%. The diabetes care company reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected, but its revenue fell short of analysts’ expectations. So did its forecast for revenue in the current quarter.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 59.88 points to 5,459.10. The Dow rallied 654.27 points to 40,589.34, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 176.16 points to 17,357.88.
In stock markets abroad, stock indexes were higher across much of Europe and Asia. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was an outlier and slipped 0.5% amid expectations the Bank of Japan may raise interest rates at a policy meeting next week.
Choe writes for the Associated Press.
