Stocks end higher, still fall for the week

A late-afternoon rally on Wall Street helped stocks close higher Friday, though the major indexes still wound up finishing lower for the week after several days of bumpy trading.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% after wavering between small gains and losses for much of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite ended essentially flat after swinging between a 1% gain and an 0.8% drop.

Several big retailers made solid gains after reporting strong quarterly results and gave investors encouraging financial forecasts. Discount retailer Ross Stores surged 9.9% for the biggest gain among S&P 500 stocks, while clothing retailer Gap rose 7.6% after beating analysts’ expectations. Foot Locker climbed 8.7% after raising its profit and revenue forecast for the year.

The solid earnings from retailers cap off a shaky week for Wall Street as investors try to get a better sense of inflation’s path and its impact on consumers and businesses.

Investors have been particularly anxious about the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation and have been looking for signs that might allow the central bank to shift to less aggressive interest rate increases. That anxiety was heightened on Thursday after a Fed official suggested U.S. interest rates might have to be raised higher than expected to cool inflation.

“It’s all been the same story for a year,” said Keith Buchanan, portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. “It’s about what inflation is doing, how the Fed responds, and from there how does the consumer respond.”

The S&P 500 rose 18.78 points to 3,965.34. The Dow rose 199.37 points to 33,745.69. The Nasdaq added 1.10 points, or less than 0.1%, to close at 11,146.06.

Smaller company stocks also gained ground. The Russell 2000 rose 10.61 points, or 0.6%, to 1,849.73.

The major indexes all finished down for the week and remain sharply lower so far this year.

Most of the 11 company sectors in the benchmark S&P 500 rose, with health care and financial stocks accounting for a big share of the gains. UnitedHealth Group rose 2.9% and Charles Schwab added 2.5%.

Marathon Oil fell 1.6% amid a broad pullback in energy prices. U.S. crude oil settled 1.9% lower.