Stock market today: Wall Street climbs to the cusp of records and closes its best week of the year

By STAN CHOE
AP Business Writer

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks rose closer to their records and closed out their best week of the year as hopes built for a big rate cut next week. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% Friday to climb within 0.7% of its all-time high reached in July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7%, and also traded close to its own record high. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.7%. Stocks got support from the bond market, where Treasury yields eased ahead of next week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve. Traders are rekindling hopes the Fed may deliver a bigger-than-usual cut to interest rates.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are rising closer to their records Friday as they finish out their fourth winning week in the last five.

The S&P 500 was 0.4% higher in afternoon trading and just 0.8% below its all-time high set in July. It's roared to claw back almost all its losses from last week, which was its worst in nearly 18 months.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 246 points, or 0.6%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, after climbing within 30 points of its record earlier in the day. The Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.

Stocks got support from the bond market, where Treasury yields eased ahead of next week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve. The unanimous expectation on Wall Street is the Fed will deliver the first cut to interest rates in more than four years on Wednesday, and traders are rekindling hopes it may offer bigger-than-usual relief.

The Federal Reserve has been keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of stifling high inflation by slowing the overall economy. But with Inflation having eased from its peak two summers ago, the Fed has said it can turn more focus to bolstering the slowing job market and economy.

How much to cut rates by will be a delicate balancing act for the Fed: Lowering them relieves pressure on the economy but can also give inflation more fuel. Reports earlier this week showed some underlying upward pressure may remain on inflation, which initially pushed traders to ratchet back expectations for the size of the Fed’s upcoming move.

On Friday, though, traders were seeing roughly a coin flip’s chance that the Fed could deliver a large cut of half of a percentage point, instead of the more traditional quarter of a point, according to data from CME Group. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in range of 5.25% to 5.50%.

“Right now, the equity market is keying off the toss-up” in the size of the Fed's cut next week “and would probably be fine with either,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

“They care more about direction than magnitude, and rates falling should take pressure” off companies' expenses and stock prices, he said.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 3.64% from 3.68% late Thursday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell more to 3.57% from 3.65%.

On Wall Street, home-furnishings company RH jumped 22.6% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. The company said demand has been gaining momentum each month “despite operating in the most challenging housing market in three decades.”

The housing market has been contending with high mortgage rates, though they've been easing since the spring with Treasury yields on expectations for coming rate cuts. Shoppers generally have also been tired of watching prices continue to rise across the economy, though a preliminary reading on U.S. consumer sentiment on Friday came in better than economists expected.

Uber Technologies revved 5.5% higher after saying it will bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta with Waymo early next year.

Oracle pared a big early gain to inch up 0.3% after giving long-term financial forecasts that analysts said topped their expectations. The software company is on pace for a 14.1% gain for the week, which it began with a better-than-expected profit report for the latest quarter.

Technology stocks have generally been the market’s main drivers this week, particularly Nvidia and other big technology stocks that struggled earlier this summer on concerns their prices had shot too high in the frenzy around artificial intelligence. Nvidia is on track for a 15.5% gain for the week.

On the losing end of Wall Street Friday was Boeing, which lost 3.3% as aircraft assembly workers walked off the job early Friday. Union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike and reject the troubled aerospace giant’s tentative contract that would have increased wages by 25% over four years.

Adobe fell 8.8%, even though the company also reported better profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said investors were more focused on its financial forecasts for the current quarter, where some trends looked to be falling short of expectations.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.