Growth stocks led a rebound in Wall Street’s main indexes on Friday at the end of a week marred by worries about the worsening outlook for economic growth, while Twitter sank after Elon Musk put his deal for the social media company on hold.
All the 11 major S&P sectors advanced in early trading, with technology and consumer discretionary stocks rising 2.7% and 3.3%, respectively.
Growth stocks such as Apple Inc, Google-owner Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com and Nvidia Corp gained between 2.2% and 6.5% after falling for most of the week.
Wall Street has gyrated wildly this week on fears that the Ukraine war, surging inflation, COVID-19 lockdowns in China and hawkish Federal Reserve policy moves could spark a global economic slowdown.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell repeated on Thursday his expectation that the central bank will raise interest rates by half a percentage point at each of its next two policy meetings while pledging “we’re prepared to do more” if data turns the wrong way.
Money markets are pricing a 73% chance of a 75 basis point hike by the Fed in June.
The S&P 500 index on Thursday came within striking distance of confirming a bear market after swooning from its all-time high reached on Jan. 3. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is already in a bear market, down 25.3% from its record close in November last year.
“I think the S&P 500 nearing bear territory is a signal to buy,” said Sylvia Jablonski, CEO at Defiance ETFs. “We haven’t seen the level of dip buying that we have historically, but I suspect that’s going to change in the near term.”
At 10:12 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 376.41 points, or 1.19%, at 32,106.71, the S&P 500 was up 73.53 points, or 1.87%, at 4,003.61, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 333.48 points, or 2.93%, at 11,704.44.
Losses this week have put the benchmark S&P 500 on course for its sixth straight weekly loss, while the blue-chip Dow and Nasdaq were looking at a seventh consecutive weekly fall.
Twitter Inc was among the biggest losers on Friday, slumping 10% after Tesla chief Elon Musk said the $44-billion deal to buy the micro-blogging platform was “temporarily on hold” even as he said he is committed to the acquisition.
Tesla Inc jumped 4.6%.
Robinhood Markets Inc surged 21% after Samuel Bankman-Fried, the chief executive and founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, revealed a 7.6% stake in the brokerage app company.
Occidental Petroleum climbed 6.3% after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed buying more shares of the oil company this week.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 5.50-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 4.70-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 1 new 52-week high and 30 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 3 new highs and 264 new lows.
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