Shares on Wall Street rose for the first time in six days on Fri. There was a bit of bright economic news. Consumer inflation expectations fell sharply in Jul. According to the latest survey from the University of Michigan, longer-term inflation expectations dropped to 2.8% from 3.1%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 658.09 pts or 2.15% to close at 31,288.26. The broader S&P 500 index rose 1.92%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.79%. The small-cap Russell 2000 gained 2.16%. Mega cap tech stocks rose, including Apple (AAPL US, +1.15%), Microsoft (MSFT US, +1.04%), Amazon (AMZN US, +2.64%), Alphabet (GOOGL US, +1.28%), NVidia (NVDA US, +2.54%), and Meta Platforms (META US, +4.21%).
It was a strong day for Banks. Wells Fargo (WFC US, +6.17%) shares rose despite reporting revenue for 2Q22 that missed the average analyst estimate. That came after Citigroup (C US, +13.23%) reported 2Q22 profit that surpassed analyst expectations. Just the day before (Thur), investors had sold off shares of Morgan Stanley (MS US, +4.5%) and Goldman Sachs (GS US, +4.36%) after the two investment banks reported their earnings.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped 4.43 basis points (bps) to 2.9152%, while the yield on the 2-year Treasuries rose 1.2 bps to 3.1201%.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up $2.06 at US$101.16/bbl and $1.81 at US$97.59/bbl respectively.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.44% to 108.063.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Aug) contracts settled down $2.20, or 0.1%, at US$1,703.60/oz. September silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 36.9 cents, or 2.0%, to end at US$18.594/oz.
European equity markets finished higher last Fri. The UK FTSE gained 1.69%, France's CAC 40 rose 2.04%, while the German DAX advanced 2.76%.