A cooldown in oil prices on Friday helped release some of the pressure that's built up on Wall Street, and US stocks closed out their first winning week in the last three.
- The Dow rose 478.64 points, or 0.9%, to 51,828.62, ending the week 0.3% higher.
- The S&P 500 rose 39.28 points, or 0.5%, to 7,743.41, up 1.2% for the week.
- The Nasdaq rose 129.34 points, or 0.5%, to 27,068.72, up 2.1% for the week.
Stocks got a boost after the price for a barrel of Brent oil dropped 2.8% to $97.44 per barrel, the AP reports. It's been yo-yoing on uncertainty about when the Iran war will allow oil to flow freely again from the Middle East. Prices go down when hopes rise for a deal to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, and they go up when doubts resurface. But trading was shaky again Friday on Wall Street, particularly after a report on US consumer sentiment sent Treasury yields higher in the morning. The University of Michigan report said US consumers are bracing for inflation of 4.6% in the coming year, up from a forecast of 4% the month before. It also said that overall sentiment among consumers was not as bad as economists expected, even if it was the lowest in four months.
Stocks on Wall Street regained strength after the price of oil declined and the 10-year Treasury yield fell. Helping to drive the market higher was Akamai Technologies. The cloud company's stock rose 3.2% after it announced an $11.6 billion, multiyear agreement with Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI chatbot. Costco Wholesale climbed 2.9% after the retailer reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Such strong profit reports from US companies have helped the stock market remain resilient despite the worries about high inflation and oil prices.
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