Stock market today: Wall Street gains ground as it heads for a winning week

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose in morning trading on Wall Street Friday, keeping the market on track for its fifth gain in a row.

The S&P 500 was up 0.1% and is solidly on track for a weekly gain that will erase most of last week's loss.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 233 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2% as of 10:10 a.m. Eastern.

Several retailers jumped after giving Wall Street encouraging financial updates.

Gap soared 7.2% after handily beating analysts' third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations, while raising its own revenue forecast for the year. Discount retailer Ross Stores rose 4.7% after raising its earnings forecast for the year.

EchoStar, parent company of the Dish satellite television provider, fell 3% after DirecTV called off its purchase of the company.

Smaller company stocks had some of the biggest gains. The Russell 2000 index rose 0.9%.

Roughly 80% of stocks in the S&P 500 were gaining ground, but those gains were kept in check by slumps for several big technology companies.

Nvidia fell 2.6%. Its pricey valuation makes it among the heaviest influences on whether the broader market gains or loses ground. The company has grown into a nearly $3.6 trillion behemoth because demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology.

Intuit, which makes Turbotax and other accounting software, fell 4.1%. It gave investors a quarterly earnings forecast that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

European markets were mostly higher and Asian markets ended mixed.

Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.42% from late Thursday.

In the crypto market, Bitcoin settled down after surpassing $99,000 for the first time on Thursday. It has more than doubled this year and was mostly recently trading around $98,000, according to CoinDesk.

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange is shown on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - People walk under a sidewalk shed near the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

A currency trader stands near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Currency traders watch computer monitors near the screens showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader walks by the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Associated Press (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition held a primary Friday to select a candidate who will run in the nation's presidential election next year.

Party members were choosing between Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, 52, a social liberal who has participated in LGBTQ+ pride parades, and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, a 61-year-old who is seen as more conservative, to run in the election to succeed incumbent President Andrzej Duda.

“I am very proud of both of our candidates,” Tusk said Friday, describing the contest as a healthy exercise in democracy. Party members had until midnight to vote by secured text message and Tusk was scheduled to announce the winner Saturday.

Trzaskowski has long been considered the obvious candidate for Tusk’s party, but was recently challenged by Sikorski’s decision to run.

Sikorski, who has served as a defense and foreign minister in past governments and has ties in Washington, argued that his experience in the areas of security and diplomacy made him the better choice at a time of war in neighboring Ukraine and political change in the United States.

“There will be a reshuffle of the security architecture in our region. You can’t learn in office — you have to get into it right away,” Sikorski said in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita news site on Friday. “I objectively know more about geopolitics, defense and security policy than Rafał Trzaskowski. I’ve been doing this longer.”

Some of Sikorski's opponents argued that Sikorski's wife, the American writer and historian Anne Applebaum, would create difficulties in the U.S.-Polish relationship when Donald Trump enters the White House because she has criticized Trump in her writings. The headline of an article she wrote for The Atlantic in October was: “Trump is speaking like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.”

The winner of Friday's contest was expected to be one of the most important candidates in a field of challengers from other parties.

The conservative opposition party, Law and Justice led by Jarosław Kaczyński, which governed Poland from 2015-23, has not named its candidate yet. That person is expected to be picked by Kaczyński.

The date of the presidential election has not yet been announced but a first round is expected to be held in May, and a possible runoff would be held two weeks later if no candidate gets an outright majority in the first round.

Duda will complete his second five-year term in August 2025 and is prevented by the constitution from running again.

It is a priority for Tusk to have an ally win the presidency because it will determine whether he can fulfil his agenda. He is currently unable to fulfill some of his campaign promises because Duda wields veto power over legislation, but also because of opposition within his own three-party coalition.

Trzaskowski in his role has overseen a rapidly changing capital city of nearly 2 million people that has absorbed large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. He ran for president in 2020, and barely lost to Duda then.

The Civic Coalition is led by Tusk's party Civic Platform and also includes smaller parties including the Greens.

ALTERNATIVE CROP FILE - Poland's Civic Platform member, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, gestures during an election campaign rally in Otwock, Poland, on Sept. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File)

FILE - Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski attends a debate with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on democracy and the aftermath of the British departure from the EU, in Warsaw, Poland, on June 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)