Stock market rebounds after Friday's wipeout

Fast Company

2 days ago

BY
U.S. stocks are rallying and recovering much of their sharp losses from last week, when worries about how President Donald Trump's tariffs may be punishing the economy sent a shudder through Wall Street.
The S&P 500 jumped 1.4% in afternoon trading to claw back more than two thirds of Friday's drop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 558 points, or 1.3%, as of 1:11 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.8% higher.
Idexx Laboratories helped lead the way and soared 26.2% after the seller of veterinary instruments and other health care products reported a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected. It also raised its forecast for profit over the full year.
Tyson Foods likewise delivered a bigger-than-expected profit for the latest quarter, and the company behind the Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farms brands climbed 4.3%.
They helped offset a 3% drop for Berkshire Hathaway after Warren Buffett's company reported a drop in profit for its second quarter from a year earlier. The weakening was due in part to the falling value of its investment in Kraft Heinz.
The pressure is on U.S. companies to deliver bigger profits after their stock prices shot to record after record recently. The jump in stock prices from a low point in April raised criticism that the broad market had become too expensive.
Stocks just sank to their worst week since May, not so much on that criticism but on worries that Trump's tariffs may be hitting the U.S. economy following a longer wait than some economists had expected. Job growth slowed sharply last month, and the unemployment rate worsened to 4.2%.
Trump reacted to the disappointing jobs numbers by firing the person in charge of compiling them. He also continued his criticism of the Federal Reserve, which could lower interest rates in order to shoot adrenaline into the economy. The Fed has instead been keeping rates on pause this year, in part because lower rates can send inflation higher, and Trump's tariffs may be set to increase prices for U.S. households.
Friday's stunningly weak jobs report did raise expectations on Wall Street that the Fed will cut interest rates at its next meeting in September. That caused Treasury yields to slump in the bond market, and they were mixed on Monday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased a bit to 4.20% from 4.23% late Friday.
The two-year yield, which moves more closely with expectations for Fed action, rose to 3.70% from 3.69% late Friday.
'In our view, if the Fed starts to cut rates at its September meeting, we believe this would be supportive for markets,' according to David Lefkowitz, head of US equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Such hopes, combined with profit reports from big U.S. companies that have largely come in better than expected, could help steady a U.S. stock market that may have been due for some turbulence. Before Friday, the S&P had gone more than a month without a daily swing of 1%, either up or down.
This upcoming week may feature fewer fireworks on Wall Street following last week's jobs report and profit updates from some of the U.S. stock market's most influential companies. This week's highlights will likely include earnings reports from The Walt Disney Co., McDonald's and Caterpillar, along with updates on U.S. business activity.
On Wall Street, Wayfair jumped 11% after the retailer of furniture and home decor said accelerating growth helped it make more in profit and revenue during the spring than analysts expected.
Tesla rose 1.6% after awarding CEO Elon Musk 96 million shares of restricted stock valued at approximately $29 billion. The move, coming six months after a judge ordered the company to revoke his massive pay package, could remove potential worries that Musk may leave the company.
CommScope soared 90% after reporting a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit and saying that it will sell its connectivity and cable business to Amphenol for $10.5 billion in cash. Amphenol rose 3.1%
They helped offset a drop of 11.6% for On Semiconductor, which only matched analysts' expectations for profit in the latest quarter. The company, which sells to the auto and industrial industries, said it's beginning to see 'signs of stabilization' across its customers.
Boeing was mostly unchanged after workers who build fighter jets for the troubled aerospace giant went on strike overnight.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.9%, and France's CAC 40 climbed 1.1%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 was an outlier with a drop of 1.2%.
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This version has been corrected to say that the U.S. stock market had its worst week last week since May, not April.
—Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.