Technology stocks key market surge

S&P 500’s run to record proves to be a reminder for investors

NEW YORK — Friday’s lift for Wall Street came with a big boost from technology stocks, something that has become typical in its run higher.

Several chip companies rose for a second straight day after heavyweight chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. delivered a better forecast for revenue this year than analysts expected. Broadcom rose 5.9 percent, and Texas Instruments climbed 4 percent.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 58.87 points as it rallied

1.2 percent to 4,839.81, returning to record heights.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average set its own record a month earlier, and it gained 395.19, or 1.1 percent, Friday to 37,863.80.

The Nasdaq composite jumped 255.32, or 1.7 percent, to 15,310.97.

Last year, a select few

Big Tech companies were responsible for the wide majority of the S&P 500’s gains. Seven of them accounted for 62 percent of the index’s total return, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Many of those stocks — Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Tesla — rode a furor in the market around technology related to artificial intelligence.

The hope is AI will lead to a boom in profits, both for companies using it and for companies providing the hardware for it.

Investors may have wished they had stayed in just those stocks, which got the nickname of “the Magnificent

7.” But some of them remain below their record highs, such as Tesla. It’s still down 48 percent from its all-time high set in November 2021.

Friday’s return of the S&P 500 to a record serves as another example that investors who stay patient and spread their investments across the U.S. stock market end up making back all their losses.

Sometimes it can take a long time, like the lost decade of 2000 through 2009 when the S&P 500 tumbled through the dot-com bubble bust and the global financial crisis. But the market has historically made investors whole again, given enough time.

Including dividends, investors with S&P 500 index funds already returned to break-even a month ago.

Of course, risks still remain for investors. Besides uncertainty about when the Fed will start cutting interest rates, it’s also still not a sure thing that the economy will avoid a recession.

Also on Friday, Asia markets mostly advanced after Japan reported slowing inflation.