US stocks roar toward their best day since May as Dow surges 1,000 points and bitcoin stops plunging
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 3 hours, 38 minutes AGO
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is roaring back on Friday, as technology stocks recover much of their drops from earlier in the week and bitcoin halts its plunge, at least for now.
The S&P 500 jumped 1.7% Friday and was heading toward its best day since May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,102 points, or 2.2%, and topped the 50,000 level for the first time. The Nasdaq composite was up 1.9%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.
Chip companies helped drive the widespread rally, and Nvidia jumped 7.3% to trim its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10%. Broadcom climbed 7.2% and fully erased its drop for the week.
They were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, and they benefited from hopes for continued spending by customers diving into artificial-intelligence technology. Amazon, for example, said late Thursday it expects to spend about $200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”
Such heavy spending, similar to what Alphabet announced a day earlier, is creating concerns of its own, though. The question is whether all those dollars will prove to be worth it and create much bigger profits in the future. With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock dropped 7%.
Even with Friday’s rebound, the S&P 500 is still potentially heading toward its third losing week in the last four. Besides worries about big AI spending by Big Tech companies, whose stocks are the most influential on Wall Street, concerns about AI potentially stealing customers away from software companies also hurt the market through the week. The hits for software stocks accelerated after AI firm Anthropic released free tools to automate things like legal services.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, steadied following a weekslong plunge that had sent it more than halfway below its record price set in October. It climbed back above $70,000 after briefly dropping close to $60,000 late Thursday.
Prices in the metals market also calmed a bit following their own wild swings. Gold rose 1.8% to settle at $4,979.80 per ounce, while silver added 0.2%.