The US stock market rose to the edge of its all-time high on Friday. Modest moves capped a quiet week for Wall Street, offering a respite following weeks of sharp and scary swings.
- The Dow rose 104.05 points, or 0.2%, to 47,954.99, ending the week up 0.5%.
- The S&P 500 rose 13.28 points, or 0.2%, to 6,870.40, up 0.3% for the week.
- The Nasdaq rose 72.99 points, or 0.3%, to 23,578.13, a climb of 0.9% for the week.
Ulta Beauty helped lead the market and jumped 12.7% after the retailer reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected, the AP reports. CEO Kecia Steelman said that its customers are broadly feeling pressure, but that Ulta saw growth across its categories, particularly in e-commerce. It raised its forecast for revenue over the full year. Another encouraging signal for the holiday shopping season came from Victoria's Secret & Co. It delivered a milder loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it likewise raised its forecast for sales over the full year. Its stock rallied 18%. Warner Bros. Discovery rose 6.3% after Netflix said it would buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion in cash and stock following its pending split from Discovery Global. Shares of Netflix fell 2.9%. Paramount Skydance, which earlier had been seen as a front-runner to buy Warner Bros., sank 9.8%.
Also on the losing end of Wall Street was SoFi Technologies. The financial technology company fell 6.1% to $27.78 after saying it would add $1.5 billion worth of its stock into the market in order to raise cash. It's selling the stock at a price of $27.50 per share. If the S&P 500 does return to a record, it would mark the latest time the US stock market has powered past what seemed to be a debilitating set of worries. Most recently, those concerns centered on what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates, whether too many dollars are flowing into artificial-intelligence technology, and if sharp drops for cryptocurrencies would bleed over into other markets.
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