The Dow and S&P 500 notched record closing highs in a shortened Black Friday session, lifted by select technology stocks, while retail was in focus as the holiday shopping season kicked off.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed more than 300 points before closing at 44,910.65, up 188.59 points, or 0.4%.
The S&P 500 gained 0.6% to 6,032.38, and the Nasdaq was up 0.8%.
All three main indexes rose more than 1% this week, while the Dow and S&P 500 had their best month of the year with gains of 7.5% and 5.7%, respectively.
Information technology stocks including Nvidia helped boost the benchmark S&P 500, while the industrial and financial sectors lifted the blue-chip Dow.
Investors monitored shoppers’ response to deep Black Friday discounts. Adobe Analytics estimated consumers would spend a record $10.8 billion in online purchases, up 9.9% from Black Friday last year.
Shares of Target, Hasbro and Macy’s rose.
“Retailers do a lot of importing. Inventory levels are very important to their profitability and ability to kind of control margins, so they will be one of the industries in the (tariffs) crossfire,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.
“But so far … (things are) looking pretty solid for the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale.”
Chip stocks rebounded from Wednesday’s declines, sending the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index higher.
The small-cap Russell 2000 index also rose as Treasury bond yields retreated further from multi-month highs.
Wall Street’s main indexes closed lower on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq leading declines, as technology stocks slumped on Thanksgiving eve on worries the Federal Reserve may be cautious about rate cuts following stubbornly strong US inflation data.
Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election earlier this month, along with his Republican Party winning the majority in both houses of Congress, provided the latest boost to equities.
Investors were pricing in expectations that Trump’s pro-business policies could spur economic growth and corporate profits. However, concerns prevailed that they could also stoke inflation, slow the pace of the Fed’s rate cuts and weigh on global growth.
Traders expect the central bank to lower borrowing costs by 25 basis points at its December meeting, but see it pausing rate cuts in January, the CME Group’s FedWatch showed.
Crypto stocks were up as bitcoin climbed 2.5%, trading at about $97,000. MARA Holdings added 1.9%, and Bit Digital advanced 4.1%.
Applied Therapeutics plunged 76% after the Food and Drug Administration declined to approve its drug for the treatment of a rare genetic metabolic disease.