U.S. stock indices ended higher on Friday and broke past two consecutive weeks of decline as investors cheered strong quarterly earnings from Microsoft and Amazon.
The S&P 500 ended 0.7% higher, while the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.5% higher. The Russell 2000, which tracks stocks with small market capitalizations, fell 0.5%.
Among ETFs tracking benchmark indexes, the added 0.4%, and (QQQ) ended Friday 0.3% higher, while the (DIA) rose 0.5%.
Meanwhile, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) rose 0.1%, as gains in Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) offset weakness in Micron Tech (MU), AMD and ASML Holdings (ASML). The broader Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) fell 1%, tracking weakness in Apple (AAPL).
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits for SPY and QQQ was ‘bearish’ and ‘neutral’ for the DIA, with ‘high’ message volumes.
US Market Drivers
| IndexMoveClose | Dow Jones Industrial Average0.5%52,485.03 | S&P 5000.7%7,489.72 | Nasdaq 1000.6%28,274.20 |
Apart from key earnings results from big-tech companies, the U.S. Federal Reserve left its interest rate unchanged in Kevin Warsh’s second decision as Governor. Latest inflation numbers still remain above the central bank’s 2% target, and investors seem to be growing jittery about the Fed’s plan to curb soaring price pressures.
The 30-year Treasury bond yield rose about 4 basis points to 5.25%, marking its highest level since 2007. Meanwhile, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 4.7%, its highest since January 2025.
“The tailwind to the dollar from resilient US economic activity is outweighed by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh failure to turn tough inflation rhetoric into a credible policy, increasing the risk the Fed falls behind the curve in containing inflation,” Elias Haddad at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co told Bloomberg in an interview.
Trending Stocks To Watch
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Alibaba (BABA): Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI is powering its flagship models using a compute agreement with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that grants access to a cluster of around 20,000 Nvidia Corp. processors.
Reddit (RDDT): The company secured a major procedural victory in its legal battle against unauthorized artificial intelligence data harvesting, after a federal judge denied motions to dismiss key claims alleging that AI platform Perplexity AI and web-scraping vendor SerpApi illegally bypassed technical safeguards to scrape community content.
Rivian (RIVN): Several Wall Street analysts flagged profitability challenges for the electric vehicle maker despite stronger-than-expected second-quarter results and an improved outlook.
Roblox Corp (RBLX): Shares were down 27% following the company’s mixed second-quarter results and a lower-than-expected revenue guidance for the third quarter.