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NEW YORK (AP) -- Another winning week for Wall Street is drifting toward a quiet close on Friday following profit reports from several big U.S. companies that topped expectations.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower in late trading, coming off its highest close since April 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 105 points, or 0.3%, at 34,500 with less than an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower.
Insurance giant UnitedHealth Group rallied 7.6% after it said profit growth during the spring was better than feared. It also raised the bottom end of its forecast for earnings for the full year.
JPMorgan Chase rose 0.4% after it said its profit during the spring grew by more than expected thanks in part to its acquisition of the troubled First Republic Bank. Like its rival and the broader market, Wells Fargo began the morning with a gain before drifting lower later in the day. It fell 0.3% despite reporting stronger profit for the second quarter than expected.
Helping to drag down Wall Street was State Street, which fell 11.4% after reporting slightly weaker revenue than expected for the latest quarter, though its profit topped forecasts.
The earnings reporting season is just getting underway, and Wall Street's expectations are low. Analysts are forecasting the worst drop in earnings per share for S&P 500 companies since the spring of 2020. If they're right, it would also mark a third straight quarter where profits sank.
Such expectations are key for financial markets, because one of the biggest factors that set a stock's price is how much profit a company produces. Wall Street nevertheless has rallied hard this week and is on track for its seventh winning week in the last nine because of rising optimism for the other major lever that sets stock prices: how much investors are willing to pay for each $1 of corporate profits.
Two reports earlier this week showed that inflation continued to cool across the U.S. economy in June. That bolstered investors' hopes that the Federal Reserve is close to feeling comfortable enough to halt its blistering campaign to raise interest rates.
The Fed has already hiked its federal funds rate to a range of 5% to 5.25%, up from virtually zero early last year. High rates undercut inflation by slowing the economy and putting downward pressure on prices for stocks and other kinds of investments.
The expectation is still for the Fed to raise rates one more time at its next meeting in two weeks. But traders are largely betting on that being the final hike of the cycle.