Stan Cho, Associated Press
32 minutes ago
FILE – An American flag is raised in front of the New York Stock Exchange on April 11, 2024 in New York. Global stocks are rising on Friday, May 10, 2024, as the S&P 500 index returns to within 1% of its all-time high following gains on Wall Street. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose more modestly Friday, heading into the end of another strong week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% in early trading, aiming for a third straight week of wins after a near-disastrous April. As of 9:35 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 128 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4%.
The S&P 500 is back within 0.4% of its all-time high after coasting through relatively quiet trading after last weekend’s big rally. The rally was fueled by renewed expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve could cut interest rates before the end of the year. Major US companies reported a series of better-than-expected earnings reports.
Gen Digital joined the parade, surging 14.7% after reporting better-than-analyst-expected profits for the first three months of 2024. The cyber safety company, whose brands include Norton and LifeLock, also authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $3 billion. The company joins the growing list of companies announcing such large-scale programs, helping investors increase their earnings per share.
Novavax more than doubled, rising 134.1% after announcing a more than $1.2 billion deal with Sanofi. The agreement includes a license to co-commercialize Novavax’s coronavirus vaccine worldwide, with certain exceptions. Novavax also reported a loss for the latest quarter that was slightly smaller than analysts expected.
Although profits beat expectations, they helped offset a 9.7% decline at Akamai Technologies, which fell short of revenue. The company, which handles cloud computing, security, and content distribution, has also partially revised its full-year earnings forecast downward.
The company said the rising value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies, along with slowing traffic growth across the industry, is hurting its business. This helped overshadow the company’s announcement of a stock buyback program worth up to $2 billion.
In the bond market, U.S. Treasury yields rose, but overall remained relatively stable. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rose to 4.48% from 4.46% late Thursday.
Since the rate exceeded 4.70% late last month, the rate has generally been easing. Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that despite continued high inflation this year, the central bank is still closer to cutting than raising key interest rates, helping push yields lower. did. The Fed is keeping its key interest rate at the highest level in more than 20 years, hoping to bring high inflation under control once and for all.
Meanwhile, weaker-than-expected jobs numbers released last weekend strike the difficult balance between keeping the U.S. economy strong enough to avoid a deep recession but not strong enough to worsen inflation. He suggested that it could be successful.
In overseas stock markets, London’s FTSE 100 index rose 0.7% after the government reported that the UK economy had returned to growth at the start of the year. The company’s results beat expectations and were the second consecutive quarter in which the economy contracted.
In Japan, the Nikkei Stock Average in Tokyo rose 0.4% on reports that strong car exports are reducing Japan’s trade deficit and generating solid profits from overseas investments.
___
AP Business writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
