And most big US companies are reporting stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected, as is usually the case.
Ford Motor revved 12.2 per cent higher to lead all companies in the S&P 500 after the automaker topped analysts’ expectations for profit in the latest quarter. The company said its business is running at the high end of its forecasted range for financial performance this year that it set out in February.
Intel added 0.3 per cent after reporting profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ expectations. CEO Lip-Bu Tan credited the artificial-intelligence boom with “accelerating demand for compute and creating attractive opportunities.”
Google’s parent company climbed 2.7 per cent after Anthropic announced an expansion worth tens of billions of dollars, through which it would increase usage of Google cloud technologies for its AI chatbot, Claude. Given its massive size, Alphabet was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500 index, along with other AI beneficiaries like Nvidia.
Procter & Gamble’s profit beat analysts’ forecasts, despite what CEO Jon Moeller called “a challenging consumer and geopolitical environment,” and the stock of the company behind the Charmin, Oral-B and Pampers brands rose 0.9 per cent.
They helped offset a drop for Newmont Mining, which fell 6.2 per cent even though it also reported a stronger profit than expected.
The miner’s stock came into the day with a stunning gain of nearly 139 per cent for the year so far, thanks to the surging price of gold. But gold’s run has stalled in the past few days since setting its latest record.
No investment’s price goes up forever, and criticism had been growing that gold’s price had gone too far, too fast after it shot up even more than the US stock market.
Many of the same factors that attracted buyers to gold this year are still there, including concerns about the mountains of debt that the US and other governments worldwide are amassing. The US government’s gross national debt topped $US38 trillion ($58.3 trillion) this week, and the worry is that a continued acceleration will only worsen inflation.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 53.25 points to 6,791.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 472.51 to 47,207.12, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 263.07 to 23,204.87.
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In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.5 per cent, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rallied 1.4 per cent for two of the world’s bigger moves.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady, as the inflation solidified already high expectations for coming cuts to rates by the Fed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 3.99 per cent from 4.01 per cent late Thursday.
A report from the University of Michigan on Friday also said expectations for inflation among US consumers remains mixed. Such numbers are important because expectations for high inflation can encourage behaviour that pushes inflation even higher, creating a vicious cycle.
AP
