Tough week for stocks finishes quietly

Wall Street indexes end mixed as Dow, S&P make slight rallies

NEW YORK — The toughest week for Wall Street in nearly two months came to a quiet end on Friday, as stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent, but it still ended the week with a drop of 1.1 percent, which was its worst since December. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 169 points, or 0.5 percent, while the Nasdaq composite fell 0.6 percent.

The S&P 500 climbed 8.96 points to 4,090.46. The Dow gained 169.39 to 33,869.27, while the Nasdaq fell 71.46 to 11,718.12.

Stocks have been struggling since rallying in January on hopes that the economy could avoid a severe recession and that cooling inflation could get the Federal Reserve to take it easier on interest rates. Worries have worsened recently that a still-strong jobs market could push upward on inflation and keep rates at a higher-for-longer level, much as the Fed has been warning.

Higher rates can drive down inflation, but they also raise the risk of a recession and drag down investment prices. And central banks around the world are intent on tightening the screws by raising rates further, even if at a slower pace than before.

“For most central banks the risk is that they have tightened too little, not too much,” economists led by Ethan Harris wrote in a Bofa Global Research report.

“The ultimate gauge of success here is not avoiding a recession, but getting inflation on a path back to target,” Harris wrote.

Investors will get more updates on inflation next week when the government gives its latest monthly updates on prices at both the wholesale and consumer levels.

The worries about rates mean much of Wall Street’s action has been in the bond market, where yields have climbed on expectations for a firmer Fed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set rates for mortgages and other important loans, rose to 3.73 percent from 3.66 late Thursday.

The two-year yield, which moves more on expectations for the Fed, ticked up to

4.50 percent from 4.48. It was at 4.08 percent just over a week ago and is near its highest level since November.

Companies in recent weeks have also been delivering a mixed set of earnings reports for the end of 2022.

On the winning side of Wall Street were energy stocks, which rose with the price of crude oil. Valero Energy gained 6.1 percent, and Marathon Oil climbed 6.2 percent.