Stock market today: Wall Street sets more records and closes a 6th straight winning week

[October 19, 2024]  By STAN CHOE

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks closed their latest winning week with more records on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% to squeak past the all-time high it had set early this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 36 points, or 0.1%, to its own record set the day before, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6%.

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. 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. The company also said David Joyner, an executive vice president, is taking over as president and CEO for Karen Lynch.

Trading overall on Wall Street remained relatively calm, as the S&P 500 closed its sixth straight winning week. That’s its longest such winning streak of 2024.

Solid economic data has boosted hopes the U.S. economy can make a perfect escape from the worst inflation in generations, one that ends without a painful recession that many investors had seen as nearly inevitable. And with the Federal Reserve now cutting interest rates to keep the economy humming, the expectation among optimists is that stocks can rise even further.

But critics are warning that stock prices look too expensive given how much faster they’ve climbed than corporate profits.

David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management, sees both sides. But 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 from 6,200.

On Wall Street, 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 forecasted range it gave at the start of the year.

The credit-card company’s drop was the biggest reason the Dow lagged behind other stock indexes.

SLB, the giant that helps companies extract oil and natural gas, fell 4.7% after delivering a mixed earnings report. Its profit edged past analysts’ expectations, but its revenue fell short as lower crude prices pushed some international producers to be cautious with their spending. CEO Olivier Le Peuch said revenue grew in the Middle East and Asia, along with offshore North America, but declined in Latin America.

A man approaches an entrance to the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Oil prices tumbled this week as worries receded that Israel will attack Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation for Iran’s missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude, and a strike could upend its exports to China and elsewhere. Concerns about the strength of demand from China have also hit oil prices.

A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell another 1.9% Friday for a 7.5% decline for the week. It’s back to $73.06 after topping $80 early last week.

On the winning side of Wall Street was Intuitive Surgical, which climbed 10% after reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. The company, whose robotic-assisted systems allow for less invasive surgery, also delivered better revenue than expected.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 23.20 points to 5,864.67. The Dow added 36.86 to 43,275.91, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 115.94 to 18,489.55.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.07% from 4.10% late Thursday.

Traders are coalescing around the idea that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting in November. Expectations had been high earlier for the Fed to deliver another larger-than-usual cut of half a percentage point, but strong updates on the economy have eliminated those. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 4.75% to 5%.

In stock markets abroad, Chinese indexes jumped in their latest sharp swing. Stocks rose 2.9% in Shanghai and 3.6% in Hong Kong after a report showed growth slowed during the summer for the world’s second-largest economy.

The slowdown, exacerbated by a weak real-estate market, has raised expectations for big stimulus from the Chinese government and central bank, though doubts are still prevalent about how much effect they will have.

Stock indexes were mixed elsewhere in Asia and Europe.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

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