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NEW YORK — Stocks rose in afternoon trading on Wall Street on Thursday as tech companies reclaimed some of the ground they lost recently.
Major indexes are still heading for weekly losses and a dismal monthly performance after falling for much of April. This week has been particularly turbulent as investors review a heavy set of corporate earnings from big tech companies, industrial firms and retailers.
The S&P 500 was up 0.8% as of 12:01 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 159 points, or 0.5%, to 33,458, and the Nasdaq rose 0.6%.
Big Tech and communications companies have been behind most of the broader market swings as their expensive stock values have more power to push the major indexes up or down.
Apple, which announced its latest financial results on Thursday, rose 2.7%. Chipmaker Qualcomm rose 6.4% after easily beating Wall Street’s profit estimates. Facebook’s parent company Meta rose 14.1% after it beat Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings estimates and reported an encouraging increase in daily user numbers.
The promotion of financial reports has helped bolster the acquisitions of many other large companies. McDonald’s rose 2.3% after a strong earnings update. Southwest Airlines rose 1.6% after reporting solid revenue and telling investors it expects a profitable year as travel demand returns as the pandemic subsides.
Bond yields gained ground. The 10-year Treasury interest rate rose from 2.81% to 2.86%.
The latest round of scorecards is coming to market as Wall Street seeks to understand how rising inflation is affecting businesses and consumer spending. Earnings were mostly positive, but investors are also focusing on forecasts that have become more difficult for many companies to provide, given all the uncertainty surrounding inflation and economic growth.
“Companies don’t have enough transparency about the future to give any numbers on this,” said Jason Draho, head of Americas asset allocation at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Supply chain issues are squeezing business operations across many industries in the recovery from the pandemic, and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has exacerbated increases in energy and staple food commodity prices. Tight COVID-19 lockdown measures in China have raised concerns about slowing growth.
“All of this is fueling investor anxiety, which is high,” Draho said. “Investors are just trying to understand what’s going on.”
The US Federal Reserve is preparing to increase rates aggressively as it accelerates its fight against inflation. The Fed chief said the central bank could raise short-term interest rates to double the usual amount at its meetings, which begin next week. It has already increased its key overnight rate once, the first such increase since 2018.
The Commerce Department on Thursday reported that the US economy shrank in the last quarter for the first time since the pandemic recession that erupted two years ago. But the report showed that consumers and businesses continue to spend despite rising inflation, a sign of underlying resilience.
As everything from food to clothing to gas becomes more expensive, consumer spending is being watched closely as a metric for the broader economy. Internet retail giant Amazon will announce its results on Thursday, giving Wall Street another measure of how retailers and consumers are responding to higher prices. Investors will also receive another update on spending on Friday, when the Commerce Department releases its March personal income and spending report.
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