After bobbing up and down through the morning, the S&P 500 took off and rallied nearly 2% before finishing with a gain of 1%.
After bobbing up and down through the morning, the S&P 500 took off and rallied nearly 2% before finishing with a gain of 1%.
— More swings hit Wall Street on Friday, except the U.S. stock market finished higher this time.
After bobbing up and down through the morning, the S&P 500 took off and rallied nearly 2% before finishing with a gain of 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 493 points, or 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.9%.
It was a fitting finish for a week that left the S&P 500 just 4.2% below its record but also forced investors to stomach the sharpest hour-to-hour swings since a sell-off in April. The jarring moves are testing investors following a monthslong and remarkably smooth surge for stocks, and they come down to two basic questions, neither of which has been answered yet.
Have prices for Nvidia, bitcoin and other stars of Wall Street shot too high? And is the Federal Reserve done with its cuts to interest rates, which would boost the economy and prices for investments?
On the second question, financial markets found some assurance from a speech by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Markets perked up immediately after John Williams told a conference in Chile that he sees “room for a further adjustment” to interest rates.
That could signal he’ll vote for another cut to rates in December. What the Fed does is critical for Wall Street because stock prices ran to records through last month in part because of expectations for a series of reductions.
