By Echo Wang
(Reuters) – U.S. stocks closed the trading week near the flat mark in a subdued session on Friday, with the Dow and Dow posting weekly declines, while the Nasdaq secured its fourth straight week of gains.
Broadcom (NASDAQ forecast quarterly revenue that beat Wall Street expectations and predicted strong growth in demand for its custom ai chips in the coming years. The optimistic outlook drove the company's shares 24% higher, lifting its capitalization market to more than $1 trillion for the first time.
Chip stocks were mixed, with Broadcom rival Marvell (NASDAQ technology rising 10.8%, while ai leader Nvidia (NASDAQ closed down 2.2%. But an indicator of stocks semiconductors added 3.2%.
US Treasury yields rose across the board, with benchmark yields hitting a three-week high.
“Right now, the interest rate sell-off is winning,” said Jay Hatfield, chief executive of Infrastructure Capital Management in New York. “It's quite natural that value and income stocks go down when tech stocks go up.”
tech stocks continued their bullish momentum, taking the Nasdaq above the 20,000 mark for the first time on Wednesday. The rally was further boosted by an online inflation report, which solidified expectations of a 25 basis point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its meeting next week.
Traders' bets on the cut at the central bank's Dec. 17-18 meeting are near 97%, according to CME's FedWatch tool. However, they indicate possibilities of a pause in January.
It fell 86.06 points, or 0.20%, to 43,828.06, the S&P 500 lost 0.16 points, or 0.00%, to 6,051.09 and gained 23.88 points, or 0.12 %, to 19,926.72.
Wall Street had taken a breather in the previous session after recent gains and some interesting economic data ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting, setting up the benchmark S&P 500 and Dow for weekly losses. However, the Nasdaq ended the week higher.
U.S. stocks have repeatedly hit all-time highs this year, driven by growing interest in heavyweight technology companies capitalizing on artificial intelligence trends.
Investor confidence also received a boost following Donald Trump's presidential election victory, as markets anticipate that his pro-business policies could improve corporate profitability.
Among other movers, RH (NYSE:) rose 16.95% after the home furnishings retailer reported higher net income for the third quarter, while DR Horton fell 0.89% as JP Morgan downgraded its rating of the homebuilder to “underweight.”
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones by a ratio of 2.23 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange. There were 100 new highs and 141 new lows on the New York Stock Exchange.
The S&P 500 recorded 8 new 52-week highs and 15 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 75 new highs and 199 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 12.56 billion shares, compared to the average of 14.03 billion for the entire session over the last 20 trading days.
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