Big Tech carries Wall Street to the close of its winning, roller-coaster week

The New York Stock Exchange is shown in New York's Financial District on Dec. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Big Tech stocks carried Wall Street Friday to the close of a winning, roller-coaster week, one that saw markets swing from fear to relief and back to caution because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to add some more to a big three-day rally, and it’s back within 10.1% of its record set earlier this year. Spurts for Nvidia and other influential tech stocks sent the Nasdaq composite up a market-leading 1.3%.

• S&P 500 market updates here
• Dow Jones updates here

But they masked a mixed day of trading on Wall Street, where more stocks fell within the S&P 500 than rose, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added only a modest 20 points, or 0.1%.

Alphabet climbed 1.7% in its first trading after Google’s parent company reported late Thursday that its profit soared 50% in the beginning of 2025 from a year earlier, more than analysts expected.

Alphabet is one of the biggest companies on Wall Street in terms of size, and that gives its stock’s movements extra influence on the S&P 500 and other indexes. Another market heavyweight, Nvidia, was also a major force pushing the S&P 500 index upward after the chip company rose 4.3%.

They helped offset a 6.7% drop for Intel, which fell even though its results for the beginning of the year also topped expectations. The chip company said it’s seeing “elevated uncertainty across the industry” and gave a forecast for upcoming revenue and profit that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

It wasn’t just Intel. Roughly three out of every five stocks in the S&P 500 sank, including Eastman Chemical, which dropped 6.2% after it gave a forecast for profit this spring that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

CEO Mark Costa said that the “macroeconomic uncertainty that defined the last several years has only increased” and that future demand for its products “is unclear given the magnitude and scope of tariffs.”

Skechers U.S.A., the shoe and apparel company, pulled its financial forecasts for the year due to “macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies” even though it just reported a record quarter of revenue at $2.41 billion. Its stock fell 5.3%.

Companies across industries have increasingly been saying the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariffs is making it difficult to give financial forecasts for the upcoming year.

Stocks bounced back from a steep slide on Monday on hopes that Trump may be softening his approach on trade and his criticism of the Federal Reserve, which had earlier shaken markets. The hope is that if Trump rolls back some of his stiff tariffs, he could avert a recession that many investors see as otherwise likely because of his trade war.

But Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs may nevertheless be pushing households and businesses to alter their spending and freeze plans for long-term investment because of how quickly conditions can change, sometimes seemingly by the hour.

“Business owners scrambling to figure out their supply chains and exposure to tariffs is more than just a distraction,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “It could be an existential threat, especially for smaller businesses that don’t have the scale or resources to have the same supply chain flexibility as larger firms.”

All told, the S&P 500 rose 40.44 points to 5,525.21. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 20.10 to 40,113.50, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 216.90 to 17,382.94.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly across much of Europe following more mixed movements in Asia. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.9%, but stocks in Shanghai slipped 0.1%.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased some more, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.25% from 4.32% late Thursday.

It’s been generally falling since approaching 4.50% earlier this month in a surprising rise that suggested investors worldwide may have been losing faith in the U.S. bond market’s reputation as a safe place to park cash.

Yields have dropped as several reports on the U.S. economy have come in weaker than expected, bolstering expectations that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates later this year to support growth.

A report on Friday morning said sentiment among U.S. consumers sank in April, though not by as much as economists expected. The survey from the University of Michigan said its measure of expectations for coming conditions has dropped 32% since January for the steepest three-month percentage decline seen since the 1990 recession.

The value of the U.S. dollar meanwhile held steady against the euro and other rival currencies. It’s been recovering some of its sharp, unexpected losses from earlier this month that had rattled investors.

——-

Stan Choe, The Associated Press