Another winning week for Wall Street

NEW YORK: Wall Street closed its latest winning week with more gains Friday (Saturday), pushing US stocks to new heights.

The S&P 500 rose 40.81 points, or 0.8 percent, to 5,137.08 a day after setting an all-time high. It’s been on a tremendous run and has climbed in 16 of the last 18 weeks because of excitement about cooling inflation and a mostly resilient US economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 90.99, or 0.2 percent, to 39,087.38. Technology stocks led the market, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 183.02, or 1.1 percent, to 16,274.94 a day after surpassing its prior record set in 2021.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after reports on manufacturing and sentiment among US consumers came in softer than economists expected. They reinforced bets that the Federal Reserve may begin cutting interest rates in June, particularly after a report on Thursday (Friday in Manila) showed a key measure of inflation behaved pretty much as expected last month.

Dell Technologies helped drive the stock market after jumping 31.6 percent. It reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, highlighting demand for its artificial intelligence (AI)-optimized servers.

A seemingly never-ending crescendo of demand for artificial intelligence technology has helped catapult stocks higher over the last year. Dell has more than tripled in the last 12 months while Nvidia has surged more than 260 percent.

NetApp leaped 18.2 percent after reporting stronger results than expected, saying it’s seeing “good momentum in AI.” The data company also gave a forecasted range for profit in the current quarter that topped what several analysts were expecting.

The mood was much more dour in the banking industry, where New York Community Bancorp tumbled 25.9 percent. It warned investors late Thursday that it found a weakness in how it internally reviews loans, caused by ineffective oversight, risk assessment and monitoring activities.

The company said it won’t be able to file its annual report in time, and it took a charge worth $2.4 billion against its results for the last three months of 2023. Its chief executive officer stepped down after 27 years with the company, effective immediately.