NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are hanging near their all-time high on Friday as they head for the close of a second straight winning week.
The S&P 500 was edging down by 0.1% in morning trading, a day after setting a record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 93 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.
Helping to keep the stock market calm was a relatively steady bond market, which has been driving much of the action on Wall Street lately. When worries about inflation and the U.S. government’s swelling debt have been on the rise, Treasury yields have climbed and helped knock down stock prices. When concerns ebb, such as after last week’s encouraging update on inflation, yields have eased and helped stocks rise.
A mostly encouraging start to the earnings reporting season for big U.S. companies has also helped prop up the stock market. Even if higher Treasury yields are pushing downward on stock prices, companies can make up for it by delivering bigger profits.
“If 2024 was the year of the election, 2025 is the year of earnings,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “Earnings have been fundamentally improving, but how long can that last and how much can they rise?”
Texas Instruments fell 5.2% despite reporting profit for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations. Showing how much pressure is on companies to keep growing, analysts focused on discouraging signals of how much profit the company is making from each $1 of revenue.
CSX sank 2.7% even though the railroad delivered a profit for the latest quarter that matched analysts’ expectations. Its revenue for the last three months of 2024 just missed analysts’ forecasts as it dealt with the effects of hurricanes.
On the winning side of Wall Street were Novo Nordisk’s U.S.-listed shares, which jumped 7.3%. The Danish company reported results from a clinical trial of a treatment for people who are overweight or obese, which could mean bigger profits in the future.
Verizon Communications rose 1.4%. It delivered results for the latest quarter that edged past analysts’ expectations, benefiting in part from price increases imposed in recent quarters, and unveiled a strategy to help businesses use artificial intelligence.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.62% from 4.65% late Thursday. Other yields also pulled lower following a couple reports on the U.S. economy that came in worse than expected.
One said sentiment among U.S. consumers is weaker than economists had forecast and fell in January for the first time in six months. The drops were widespread, carrying across incomes, wealth and age groups, according to Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan.
