Stock market today: Wall Street is off to a mixed start; Big Tech climbs

NEW YORK: Stocks are off to another mixed start on Wall Street as more gains for Big Tech companies offset weakness elsewhere in the market.

The S and P 500 was up 0.3 per cent in the early going on Friday, on track for its fourth weekly gain in a row. A day earlier the bechmark index closed 20 per cent above its October low, entering a new bull market.

The Nasdaq composite added 0.7 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was just barely higher with a gain of less than 0.1 per cent. Chipmaker Nvidia rose another 2 per cent. European markets were lower and Asian markets closed higher overnight.

European shares declined on Friday after a day of gains in Asia following Wall Street's return to bull market status.

France's CAC 40 lost 0.4 per cent to 7,198.50 while Germany's DAX slipped 0.3 per cent to 16,886.40. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.4 per cent to 7,572.16. The future for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.2 per cent and the contract for the S and P 500 future was down 0.1 per cent.

Asian benchmarks rose on Friday, tracking Wall Street's gains. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 2.0 per cent to finish at 32,265.17. Australia's S and P/ASX 200 gained 0.3 per cent to 7,122.50.

South Korea's Kospi added 1.2 per cent to 2,641.16. Hong Kong's Hang Seng advanced 0.5 per cent to 19,389.95. The Shanghai Composite rose 0.6 per cent to 3,231.41.

Still, Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said worries persist over the weakness of China's recovery from pandemic restrictions ''China's post-reopening recovery has slowed incredibly in the second quarter,'' Innes said in a commentary. "Now people are wondering if we are near rock bottom or not." On Thursday, the S and P 500 gained 0.6 per cent. The Dow gained 0.5 per cent and the Nasdaq rose 1 per cent.

With the S and P 500 rising 20 per cent above the bottom it hit in October, Wall Street's main measure of health has climbed out of a painful bear market, which saw it drop 25.4 per cent over roughly nine months.

The arrival of a bull market also doesn't mean the stock market has made it back to its prior heights. A 25 per cent drop for the S and P 500 requires a 33per cent rally just to get back to even.

Declaring the end of a bear market may seem arbitrary, and different market watchers use different definitions, but it offers a useful marker for investors. It also provides a reminder that investors who can hold on through downturns nearly always eventually have made back all their losses in S and P 500 index funds.

Even though it was driven by so many extremes — the worst inflation in generations and the fastest hikes to interest rates in decades, for example— this most recent bear market lasted only about nine months.

It stretched from January 3, 2022, when the S and P 500 set a record, until October 12, when it hit bottom. That's shorter than the typical bear market, and it also resulted in a shallower loss than average, according to data from S and P Dow Jones Indices.

The economy has avoided a recession so far because of a remarkably solid job market and spending by consumers. Hopes also are rising that the Fed may soon stop hiking interest rates.

The broad expectation among traders is that the Fed will hold rates steady next week, which would mark the first meeting where it hasn't raised rates in more than a year. While it may hike rates one more time in July, the hope on Wall Street is that it won't go beyond that. Inflation has been coming down from its peak last summer.

In energy trading, benchmark US crude added 2 cents to USD 71.31 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It shed USD 1.24 to USD 71.29 a barrel on Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up 4 cents to USD 76.00 a barrel.

In currency trading, the US dollar edged up to 139.62 Japanese yen from 138.90 yen. The euro fell to USD 1.0760 from USD 1.0783.