Dow rises 150 points as Wall Street looks to end winning week
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose on Friday as Wall Street pushed for solid gains during the holiday-shortened trading week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 173 points, or 0.51 percent. The S&P 500 rose 0.03% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.55%, weighed down by shares of Activision Blizzard, which fell more than 4% on news that the FTC could block Microsoft from taking over the gaming company.
Concerns about continued shutdowns in China kept markets in check. The country is increasing Covid restrictions after seeing the number of climbing cases in recent days. Earlier this week, China reported its first Covid deaths since May.
Wall Street looks set to end an upbeat holiday-shortened week, after the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting minutes added to expectations that monetary policy may ease.
“A significant majority of participants felt that a slowdown in the pace of increase would probably soon be appropriate,” the minutes said.
Stocks jumped on the news on Wednesday, notching their second straight day of gains in a week characterized by choppy trading and low volumes. For the week, the Dow is up 1.75% and the S&P 500 is up 1.66%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq lags behind the other two indexes, but is still up almost 1% on the week.
The markets were closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday and will close at 1:00 PM ET on Friday.