Wall Street waltzes past latest record

S&P 500 finishes above 5K in a first while Nasdaq, Dow reach milestones

NEW YORK — More gains for U.S. stocks on Friday sent Wall Street to its latest record, milestone and winning week.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent and finished a day above the 5,000 level for the first time.

The Nasdaq composite jumped 1.2 percent to pull within 0.4 percent of its own all-time high, which was set in 2021.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was a laggard a day after setting its own latest record. It slipped 54 points, or 0.1 percent.

Wall Street’s rally got going with hopes that cooling inflation would get the Federal Reserve to dial down the pressure by cutting interest rates.

Cloudflare was the latest company to soar after reporting stronger profit than analysts expected for its latest quarter. The cloud-services company jumped

19.5 percent after it said it signed both its largest new customer and its largest renewal ever, despite an overall economic environment that “remains challenging to predict.”

Big Tech stocks did most of the market’s heavy lifting. They helped offset a 3.6 percent drop for Pepsico, which reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It said growth is slowing because customers are getting back to their snacking and other behaviors from before the pandemic.

Expedia tumbled 17.8 percent despite also reporting stronger profit than expected.

The company gave forecasts for the first three months of 2024 that analysts said pointed to slower growth in bookings. The company also announced a new CEO, Ariane Gorin, will take over in May.

Take-two Interactive, the publisher of “Grand Theft Auto” and other video games, sank 8.7 percent after it reported weaker profit than expected. It also cut its forecast for results for its fiscal year, which ends at the close of March.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 28.70 points to 5,026.61.

The Dow slipped 54.64 to 38,671.69, and the Nasdaq gained 196.95 to 15,990.66.

Profits have largely been coming in better than expected for the big companies in the S&P 500 this reporting season, which is roughly two-thirds finished. That’s usually the case, but even more companies than usual are doing so this time around, according to Factset.

That has helped optimism rise on Wall Street, but contrarians say it may have gone too far and carried stocks to too-expensive heights.