Wall Street coasts to the finish of its best week in the last 5
[September 13, 2025] By
STAN CHOE
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street coasted to the finish of its best week in
the last five on Friday as U.S. stocks hung near their record levels.
The S&P 500 barely budged and edged down by less than 0.1% from the
all-time high it set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
fell 273 points, or 0.6%, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.4% to its
own record set on Thursday.
Stocks have rallied with expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut
its main interest rate for the first time this year at its meeting next
week. Such a move would give the economy a kickstart, and mortgage rates
have already dropped in anticipation of it.
Expectations for a cut have built as recent reports suggested the U.S.
job market could settle into the precise balance that Wall Street has
been betting on: slow enough to convince the Fed that it needs help, but
not so weak that it will mean a recession, all while inflation doesn’t
take off.
A lot is riding on whether that bet proves correct. Stocks have already
soared on it. And if the Fed ends up cutting interest rates fewer times
than traders expect, including three this year, the market could retreat
in disappointment. That’s even if everything else goes right, and the
economy does not fall into a recession and President Donald Trump’s
tariffs don’t send inflation much higher.
Investors, “and I think the Fed, are convinced that we are not on the
verge of a surge in inflation,” according to Scott Wren, senior global
market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
A survey from the University of Michigan on Friday suggested
expectations for inflation may not be worsening among U.S. consumers.
Preliminary data suggested they’re bracing for inflation of 4.8% in the
upcoming year, the same as they were a month earlier.
Expectations for inflation over the longer term crept higher, though
they’re still below where they were in April, when Trump announced his
worldwide tariffs.
In the meantime, Wall Street continued to drift around its record
heights.
RH fell 4.6% after the furniture retailer reported profit and revenue
for the latest quarter that came up short of analysts’ expectations. It
also trimmed its forecasted range for revenue this fiscal year amid what
CEO Gary Friedman called “the polarizing impact of tariff uncertainty
and the worst housing market in almost 50 years.”
Oracle sank 5.1% and was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500
index. But that shaved only a bit off its surge from earlier in the
week, when it soared to its best day since 1992 amid excitement about
its winning multibillion dollar contracts related to
artificial-intelligence technology.
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Trader John Bishop works on the floor of the New York Stock
Exchange, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
 Another company that’s benefited
from the AI frenzy, Super Micro Computer, rose 2.4% after saying
it’s begun high-volume shipments of racks using Blackwell Ultra
equipment from Nvidia that can be used for AI.
Microsoft climbed 1.8% after European Union
regulators accepted the tech giant’s proposed changes to its Teams
platform, resolving a long-running antitrust investigation.
The European Commission said Friday that Microsoft’s final
commitments to unbundle Teams from its Office software suite,
including further tweaks following a market test in May and June,
are enough to satisfy competition concerns.
All told, the S&P 500 slipped 3.18 points to 6,584.29. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average fell 273.78 to 45,834.22, and the Nasdaq
composite rose 98.03 to 22,141.10.
In stock markets abroad, indexes held relatively steady in Europe
after mostly rising in Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.9% to another record, while Hong Kong’s
Hang Seng rallied 1.2% for two of the bigger moves.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to
recover some of its drop from earlier in the week. It rose to 4.06%
from 4.01% late Thursday.
Yields have been mostly sinking as expectations built on Wall Street
that the Fed will resume cutting rates soon.
The Fed has been on hold through 2025, mostly because of the risk
that Trump’s tariffs could send prices for all kinds of U.S.
household purchases much higher. Lower interest rates can make
inflation even worse.
That inaction, though, has infuriated Trump. He has threatened to
fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has nicknamed “Too Late,” and
has escalated his attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa
Cook, accusing her of mortgage fraud.
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AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
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