US stocks closed their latest winning week with more records on Friday, while trading overall remained relatively calm.
- The Dow rose 36.86 points, or 0.1%, to 43,275.91, adding to its record set Thursday.
- The S&P 500 rose 23.20 points, or 0.4%, to 5,864.67, topping the all-time high it set days earlier and closed out a sixth straight winning week.
- The Nasdaq rose 115.94 points, or 0.6%, to 18,489.55.
Netflix helped drive the market with a leap of 11.1% after the streaming giant reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, the AP reports. That was despite a slowdown in subscriber growth. It helped offset a 5.2% drop for CVS Health, which said it's likely to report a profit for the latest quarter that's well below what analysts had been expecting. American Express fell 3.1% despite reporting better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell short of forecasts, and it said its revenue for the full year of 2024 will likely come in at the lower end of the range it forecast at the start of the year. The credit-card company's drop was the biggest reason the Dow lagged behind other stock indexes.
Solid economic data has boosted hopes the US economy can make a perfect escape from the worst inflation in generations, without a painful recession that many investors had seen as nearly inevitable. And with the Federal Reserve now cutting interest rates, the expectation among many is that stocks can rise even further. But others warn that stock prices look too expensive given how much faster they've climbed than corporate profits. David Lefkowitz, head of US equities at UBS Global Wealth Management, sees both sides. While stock prices are indeed high relative to profits, he says they're reasonable when considering the Fed is cutting interest rates and other factors. He's also expecting growth in corporate profits to continue, and he raised his forecast for where the S&P 500 could be in June to 6,300. (More Wall Street stories.)
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