NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is rallying out of its holiday-season funk on Friday, and its best day in nearly two months is helping to trim U.S. stock indexes’ losses for the week.
The S&P 500 climbed 1.2% toward its first gain since Christmas. It’s on track to break a five-day losing streak, its longest since April, and cut its loss for the week to 0.5% thanks in large part to Big Tech stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 313 points, or 0.7%, with an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.7% higher.
Nvidia helped drive the market higher, despite criticism that prices for it and other tech companies have vaulted too high in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. Nvidia rose 4.3% and was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward. Super Micro Computer, which sells servers for AI and other uses, jumped 7.8%.
“While the easy gains in AI may be behind us, we think this rally looks far from over,” according to Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer, Americas, at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Another influential Big Tech stock, Tesla, rose 6.7% to bounce back from its 6.6% tumble the day before, when it disclosed it delivered fewer electric vehicles in the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected.
Rival Rivian jumped 22.3% after saying it delivered more than 14,000 vehicles during the last three months of 2024. That was more than analysts expected.
On the losing end of Wall Street was U.S. Steel, which fell 5.4% after President Joe Biden blocked a nearly $15 billion deal proposed by Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy its Pittsburgh-based rival.
Beer, wine and liquor companies sank after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned about the direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk. He called for an update on the health warning label on alcoholic drinks, as well as for a reassessment of guidelines for alcohol consumption to account for cancer risk.
Molson Coors Beverage fell 3.4%. Brown-Forman, the distillery behind Jack Daniel’s, lost 1.6%.
Wall Street’s pullback over the last week has dimmed its shine by only a bit following two stellar years for U.S. stock indexes. They’ve vaulted to records after the U.S. economy managed to keep growing despite high interest rates that have helped bring high inflation nearly all the way down to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
But even though the economy and job market look solid at the moment, the path ahead is not assured. Part of the reason the S&P 500 set more than 50 all-time highs last year was because of the expectation that the Fed would keep cutting interest rates through 2025, after it began easing them in September.