Week Ahead Stock prices went down a lot during trading on Thursday, but they went up a lot during trading on Friday. Because of the rally that happened during the day, the main averages set new highs for the first quarter as they closed.
As the trading day came to an end, the main averages went up even more, and at the end of the session, they were at their highest levels of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up 424.38 points, or 1.3% , to 33,761.05 . The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 267.27 points, or 2.1 %, to 13,047.19 , while the S&P500 rose 72.88 points, or 1.7% , to 4,280.15. The S&P 500 index went up by 3.3 % over the course of the week, giving it its fourth straight weekly gain. The Nasdaq and Dow both gained 3.1 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively. The current trend of stocks going up has continued, so the main averages are now much higher than they were in June and have reached their highest levels in the last three months. As a result of data showing that consumer and producer prices were lower than expected, there is hope that inflation has reached its peak, which has also helped Wall Street keep going. The U.S. Department of Labor (Labor Department) recently released a study that showed prices for goods brought into the U.S. from other countries fell more than expected in July.
The prices paid for imported goods went down by 1.4 % in July, according to the Department of Labor. This was after an increase of 0.3% in June that was later changed to be higher. Since import costs hadn't gone down since December of 2021, this was a big change. Instead of the 0.2% increase in import prices that was first reported for the previous month, economists had expected import prices to drop by 1.0% . The survey also showed that the prices of goods sold abroad went down by 3.3% in July after going up by 0.7% in June. It was expected that export prices would go down by 1.1% . According to a University of Michigan study, consumer mood in the United States improved much more than expected in August. This made people more interested in buying things. According to the survey, the index that shows how consumers feel about the economy went up from 51.5 in July to 55. 1 in August. The average prediction of economists was that the index would go up to 52.5. After hitting a new all-time low of 50. 0 in June, the index of consumer sentiment kept going up in July, with a bigger gain than had been expected. According to another report from the University of Michiga n, inflation estimates for the next year dropped from 5.2 percent in July to 5.0 percent in August, but inflation estimates for the next five years went up from 2.9 percent t to 3.0 percent.
Estimates of inflation for one year are at their lowest level since February, but Director of Surveys of Consumers Joanne Hsu pointed out that these estimates are still much higher than the 4.6 percent figure from one year ago.
The main reason why the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index went up by three percent was that the prices of semiconductor stocks went back up after falling earlier in the week. The NYSE Arca Airline Index went up by 2.8% to a closing high that hadn't been seen in the market for two months. This shows that airline stocks were also very strong. The strong performance of networking stocks all day led directly to a gain of 2.6 percentage points for the NYSE Arca Networking Index. At the end of the session, the market index hit its highest level in well over three months. Gold stocks, chemical stocks, and brokerage stocks all moved up a lot, as did most of the other main market segments. Different Markets Friday's trading on stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region was a mixed bag, which shows how uncertain the region's economy is as a whole. After a holiday on Thursday, the Nikkei 225 Index in Japan went up by 2.6 percentage points , but the Shanghai Composite Index in China went down by 0.2 percentage poin ts. At the same time, on any given day, all of the major European markets were up. While the DAX Index in Germany went up by 0.7% , the FTSE 100 Index in the UK went up by 0.5%, and the CAC 40 Index in France went up by 0.1%. The value of Treasury's was able to make up some ground on the bond market after losing a lot during the previous session. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note fell by 3.9 basis points to 2.849 percent, moving in the opposite direction of its price.
Along with the flood of housing statistics coming out next week, reports on retail sales and industrial output are sure to get a lot of attention. Traders will almost certainly keep a close eye on the minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent meeting, hoping to learn something new about how interest rates will move in the future.
