NEW YORK (AP) — Big Tech stocks are carrying Wall Street higher Friday as U.S. stocks near the end of their latest roller-coaster week.
The S&P 500 was up 0.6% in late trading and adding to its big three-day rally. Spurts for Nvidia and other influential tech stocks sent the Nasdaq composite up a market-leading 1.1%.
But they were masking drops for the majority of stocks on Wall Street, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 7 points, or less than 0.1%, with an hour remaining in trading.
Alphabet climbed 1.7% in its first trading after Google’s parent company reported late Thursday that its profit soared 50% in the beginning of 2025 from a year earlier, more than analysts expected.
Alphabet is one of the biggest companies on Wall Street in terms of size, and that gives its stock’s movements extra influence on the S&P 500 and other indexes. Another market heavyweight, Nvidia, was also a major force pushing the S&P 500 index upward after the chip company rose 3.4%.
They helped offset a 7.5% drop for Intel, which fell even though its results for the beginning of the year also topped expectations. The chip company said it’s seeing “elevated uncertainty across the industry” and gave a forecast for upcoming revenue and profit that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
It wasn’t just Intel. Three out of five stocks in the S&P 500 sank, including Eastman Chemical, which dropped 5.9% after it gave a forecast for profit this spring that fell short of analysts’ expectations.
CEO Mark Costa said that the “macroeconomic uncertainty that defined the last several years has only increased” and that future demand for its products “is unclear given the magnitude and scope of tariffs.”
Skechers U.S.A., the shoe and apparel company, pulled its financial forecasts for the year due to “macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies” even though it just reported a record quarter of revenue at $2.41 billion. Its stock fell 4.7%.
They’re the latest companies to say the uncertainty created by President Donald Trump’s trade war is making it difficult to give financial forecasts for the upcoming year.
Stocks bounced back from a steep slide on Monday on hopes that Trump may be softening his approach on tariffs and his criticism of the Federal Reserve, which had earlier shaken markets. The hope is that if Trump rolls back some of his stiff tariffs, he could avert a recession that many investors see as otherwise likely because of his trade war.
But Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs may nevertheless be pushing households and businesses to alter their spending and freeze plans for long-term investment because of how quickly conditions can change, sometimes seemingly by the hour.
“Business owners scrambling to figure out their supply chains and exposure to tariffs is more than just a distraction,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “It could be an existential threat, especially for smaller businesses that don’t have the scale or resources to have the same supply chain flexibility as larger firms.”
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly across much of Europe following more mixed movements in Asia. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.9%, but stocks in Shanghai slipped 0.1%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased some more, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.26% from 4.32% late Thursday.
It’s been generally falling since approaching 4.50% earlier this month in a surprising rise that had suggested investors worldwide may be losing faith in the U.S. bond market’s reputation as a safe place to park cash.
Yields have dropped as several reports on the U.S. economy have come in weaker than expected, raising expectations that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates later this year to support growth.
A report on Friday morning said sentiment among U.S. consumers sank in April, though not by as much as economists expected. The survey from the University of Michigan said its measure of expectations for coming conditions has dropped 32% since January for the steepest three-month percentage decline seen since the 1990 recession.
The value of the U.S. dollar meanwhile strengthened against the euro and other rival currencies. It’s been recovering some of its sharp, unexpected losses from earlier this month that rattled investors.
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AP Writers Jiang Junzhe and Matt Ott contributed.
