Chipmaker Intel Corp gained after it said gross
margins will improve in the second half.
Yet Amazon.com Inc fell despite
better-than-expected quarterly results, as it signaled its cloud
computing business growth would slow further. Its performance
weighed on the consumer discretionary index .
"Markets are building on yesterday's gains a little bit.
This week's earnings overall were better than people expected.
There was a lot of pessimism going in but the past week has
brought home the fact that it's not turning into a bad earnings
season at all," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment
Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He suggested investors may still be cautious ahead of Apple Inc's results due next week and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting and the U.S. jobs report for April.
John Praveen, co-CIO at Paleo Leon Inc in Princeton, NJ said Friday's economic data solidified expectations ahead of next week's Fed meeting and eased fears about a sharp slowdown.
Data showed U.S. consumer spending unchanged in March, while underlying inflation pressures remained strong, feeding expectations the Fed will hike interest rates by 25 basis points next week. Other data showed first-quarter U.S. economic growth slowed more than expected, while plunging consumer confidence in April heightened fears of a recession.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 34.71 points, or 0.83%, to end at 4,170.06 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 84.35 points, or 0.70%, to 12,226.58. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 275.36 points, or 0.81%, to 34,101.52. The benchmark S&P 500 registered a second consecutive monthly gain. It was helped by better-than-expected earnings from megacap companies including Alphabet Inc , Microsoft Corp and Meta Platforms Inc .
Analysts now expect first-quarter earnings for S&P 500
companies to fall 1.9% from a year ago compared with a 5.1% fall
expected at the start of April, according to Refinitiv data.
The Fed issued a detailed and scathing assessment of its
failure to identify problems and push for fixes at Silicon
Valley Bank before the U.S. lender's collapse, and promised
tougher supervision and stricter rules for banks.
While the broader banking sector saw some gains on Friday,
shares in beleaguered regional lender First Republic
Bank tumbled after a report it was likely headed for
receivership under the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation.
Snapchat-owner Snap Inc dived after it warned next
quarter's results could miss Wall Street targets, while
Pinterest Inc shares sank after the image-sharing
platform forecast second-quarter revenue growth below estimates.
Cloudflare Inc tumbled on a downbeat revenue
forecast from the cloud services provider, while
Colgate-Palmolive Co climbed after lifting its annual
organic sales forecast betting on consistent price hikes.
(Reporting by Sinéad Carew in New York, Sruthi Shankar and
Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Johann M
Cherian
Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and David Gregorio)
