NEW YORK (AP) โ U.S. stocks on Friday neared the close of another winning week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.1% in midday trading and was headed for a third straight week of gains after a mostly miserable April. It had been on track for a bigger gain but mostly disappeared after a disappointing report on U.S. consumer confidence released in the morning.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 80 points, or 0.2%, as of 11:15 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.1%.
The S&P 500 is back within 0.7% of its record thanks to renewed hopes that the Federal Reserve could make interest rate cuts this year. A spate of better-than-expected earnings reports from large U.S. companies has also helped support the market.
Gen Digital jumped 15.3% after joining the parade and reporting better earnings for the first three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The cybersecurity company, whose brands include Norton and LifeLock, also authorized a program to buy back up to $3 billion of its shares. It joins a growing list of companies announcing big programs of this type, helping to boost earnings per share for investors.
Novavax more than doubled and soared 124.6% after announcing a deal with Sanofi that could be worth more than $1.2 billion. The agreement includes a license to co-market Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, with some exceptions. Novavax also reported a slightly smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
They helped offset a 7.5% decline for Akamai Technologies, which beat earnings expectations but missed revenue. The cloud computing, security and content delivery company also lowered some of its full-year financial forecasts.
It said the strengthening value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies is impacting its business, along with slowing traffic growth across the industry. That helped overshadow his own announcement of a program to buy back up to $2 billion of his stock.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose following the disappointing preliminary report from the University of Michigan.
It suggested that confidence among American consumers is weakening much more than economists expected, and the drop was large enough to be "statistically significant and brings confidence to its lowest reading in about six months," according to Joanne Hsu, director of the consumer survey. .
Potentially even more discouraging is that American consumers were forecasting 3.5% inflation next year, up from their 3.2% forecast the previous month. If such expectations rise, the fear is that it could lead to a vicious cycle that worsens inflation.
It highlights how some companies have recently been describing increasing struggles among their customers, particularly low-income ones.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.50% from 4.46% late Thursday. But the move was still relatively modest compared to its 4.70% drop late last month.
Markets may remain on hold until Wednesday's much-anticipated update on US consumer inflation, according to Bank of America rates strategists. Traders still largely expect one or two interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve this year, according to CME Group data.
Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped lower yields after saying the central bank remains closer to cutting its main interest rate than raising it despite a series of stubbornly high inflation readings. this year. The Federal Reserve has been keeping its main interest rate at the highest level in more than two decades in hopes of fully controlling high inflation.
Meanwhile, a better-than-expected jobs report late last week suggested the U.S. economy could pull off the tricky balancing act of staying strong enough to avoid a bad recession, but not so strong that it worsens inflation. .
In overseas stock markets, London's FTSE 100 rose 0.7% after the government reported that the UK economy had recovered and returned to growth at the start of the year. The performance was better than expected and broke two consecutive quarters in which the economy contracted.
In Japan, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 0.4% after a report showed strong auto exports narrowed the country's trade deficit and built up strong returns from overseas investments.
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AP Business writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
