Stocks on Wall Street rallied on Friday, bouncing off a drop that had left the market in a correction after weeks of selling. The gains weren’t enough to overcome the steep losses from earlier in the week, and the S&P 500 remained in negative territory for the week.
The index was up about 1.8 percent by midday trading on Friday, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies each jumped more than 2 percent. Shares in Europe and Asia also rallied, as did cryptocurrencies, oil prices and other investments that had been knocked down recently.
For the week, the S&P 500 was still down roughly 2.6 percent, after it suffered its sharpest decline of the year on Monday and fell on Tuesday and Thursday as well. By Thursday afternoon, the index was down 10.1 percent from its Feb. 19 peak, and in Wall Street terms what investors call a correction. That’s a drop of more than 10 percent, and a symbolic marker of investors’ darkening mood.
The biggest concern on Wall Street right now is the impact of tariffs and a trade war that could push prices for manufacturers and consumers sharply higher, dent consumer sentiment and damage the economy.
“Until the haphazard tit-for-tat tariff threats are behind us, the uncertainty means markets will remain on edge,” John Canavan, the lead U.S. analyst at Oxford Economics, said in a note on Friday.
Those concerns are evident in other markets, too — including the gold market. Gold, which is often sought out by investors as a safe haven during times of turmoil, hit a record on Friday, after breaking above $3,000 per troy ounce for the first time.
The key question remains “where fair value rests for a stock market that faces headwinds from tariffs, fiscal spending cuts and potentially softening economic data,” said Yung-Yu Ma, the chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management.
Friday’s rebound in stocks came despite new data from the University of Michigan that showed consumers were less confident about the economic outlook and more worried about inflation. Investors will have more data points to consider soon, most notably the latest economic projections from the Federal Reserve, which is scheduled to meet and discuss its interest rate policy next week.
Investors don’t expect the Fed to begin cutting rates this month, but any signal that the central bank is more willing to do so — to bolster the economy — later this year could boost the falling market.
