Stock market today: Wall Street’s best week of 2024 closes with indexes near their records

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks closed out their best week of the year with more gains on Friday and climbed to the cusp of their records.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% for a fifth straight gain and is just 0.7% below its all-time high set in July. Rallies for Microsoft, Broadcom and other big technology stocks helped it claw back almost all its losses from last week, which was its worst in nearly 18 months.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 297 points, or 0.7%, and at one point got within 30 points of its record set last month. The Nasdaq composite added 0.7%.

Uber Technologies helped drive the market higher with a gain of 6.4% after saying it will bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta with Waymo early next year.

Stocks also got support from the bond market, where Treasury yields eased ahead of next week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve. The unanimous expectation on Wall Street is for the Fed to deliver the first cut to interest rates in more than four years on Wednesday, and traders are rekindling hopes it may offer bigger-than-usual relief.

The Federal Reserve has been keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of slowing the economy enough to stifle high inflation. With inflation having eased substantially from its peak two summers ago, the Fed has said it can turn more focus to bolstering the slowing job market and economy.

How much to cut rates by will be a delicate balancing act for the Fed: Lowering them relieves pressure on the economy but can also give inflation more fuel. Reports earlier this week showed some underlying upward pressure may remain on inflation, which initially pushed traders to ratchet back expectations for the size of the Fed’s upcoming move.

On Friday, though, traders were seeing roughly a coin flip’s chance that the Fed could deliver a large cut of half of a percentage point, instead of the more traditional quarter of a point, according to data from CME Group. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%.

“Right now, the equity market is keying off the toss-up” in the size of the Fed’s cut next week “and would probably be fine with either,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

“They care more about direction than magnitude, and rates falling should take pressure” off companies’ expenses and stock prices, he said.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 3.65% from 3.68% late Thursday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell more sharply to 3.58% from 3.65%.

On Wall Street, home-furnishings company RH jumped 25.5% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. The company said demand has been gaining momentum each month “despite operating in the most challenging housing market in three decades.”

The housing market has been contending with high mortgage rates, though they’ve been easing since the spring on expectations for coming rate cuts. Shoppers have also generally been beaten down as prices continue to rise across the economy, though a preliminary reading on U.S. consumer sentiment on Friday came in better than economists expected.

Oracle pared a big early gain to inch up 0.4% after giving long-term financial forecasts that analysts said topped their expectations. That brought the software company’s gain to 14.3% for the week, which it began with a better-than-expected profit report for the latest quarter.

Technology stocks were generally the market’s main drivers this week, particularly Nvidia and other big technology stocks that struggled earlier this summer on concerns their prices had shot too high in the frenzy around artificial intelligence. Nvidia rallied 15.8% over the week despite slipping 0.1% on Friday.

On the losing end of Wall Street Friday was Boeing, which lost 3.7% as aircraft assembly workers walked off the job. Union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike and reject the troubled aerospace giant’s tentative contract that would have increased wages by 25% over four years.

Adobe fell 8.5%, even though the company also reported better profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said investors were more focused on its financial forecasts for the current quarter, where some trends looked to be falling short of expectations.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 30.26 points to 5,626.02. The Dow gained 297.01 to 41,393.78, and the Nasdaq composite added 114.30 to 17,683.98.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.

AP Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.

FILE - American flags hang on the front of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 11, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

People stand in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

DETROIT (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated false claims that Chinese automakers are putting up large factories in Mexico, vowing during a stop in the automaking state of Michigan to slap 200% tariffs on any vehicles the unbuilt plants make and ship to the United States.

Trump also claimed during an event in Flint that if Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is elected in November, there will be no more auto industry in the U.S., because work building electric vehicles will go to China.

That statement came even though automaking employment has grown since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, after dropping during Trump's first term.

“If I don't win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years," Trump said, calling any increases under Biden and Harris temporary. “You will not have any manufacturing plants. China is going to take over all of them because of the electric car.”

He told the crowd he would make foreign automakers build factories in the U.S. by imposing tariffs on imported autos, saying it “will be like taking candy from a baby.”

Foreign automakers already have multiple U.S. factories, mainly in southern states.

Auto jobs dipped 0.8% during Trump's term to just over 949,000 in January 2021, when he left office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since Biden took office that month, auto and parts jobs rose 13.6% to 1.07 million in August, so there's no evidence of the industry disappearing. Auto sales were up 2.4% in the first half of this year.

Trump said his tariffs would make Chinese vehicles built in Mexico unsellable in the U.S., forcing automakers from China and elsewhere to set up factories in the U.S.

“They’re owned and built by China in Mexico, and there are a number of them going up right now,” Trump said of Chinese factories.

Although some Chinese automakers aspire to sell in the U.S., industry analysts say there are no large Chinese-owned auto factories under construction in Mexico, and there's only one small Chinese auto assembly factory operating there. It’s run by a company called JAC that builds inexpensive vehicles from kits for sale in that country.

Trump also promised to charge tariffs on vehicles made in other countries if those countries tax U.S.-made vehicles. But often tariffs end up being passed on to consumers in the country that assesses them.

The Harris campaign issued a statement from Michigan Sen. Gary Peters saying that a second Trump term would crush auto jobs, “ceding Michigan's global auto manufacturing leadership to the Chinese government.” He said Harris has a plan to bring good-paying manufacturing jobs home "and ensure Michigan workers continue to lead the world in auto manufacturing.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Mich., Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)