NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� U.S. stocks closed out their best week of the year with more gains on Friday and climbed to the cusp of their records.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5% for a fifth straight gain and is just 0.7% below its all-time high set in July. Rallies for Microsoft, Broadcom and other big technology stocks helped it claw back almost all its losses from last week, which was its .
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 297 points, or 0.7%, and at one point got within 30 points of its record set last month. The Nasdaq composite added 0.7%.
Uber Technologies helped drive the market higher with a gain of 6.4% after saying it will bring to Austin and Atlanta with Waymo early next year.
Stocks also got support from the bond market, where Treasury yields eased ahead of next week鈥檚 meeting of the Federal Reserve. The unanimous expectation on Wall Street is for the Fed to deliver in more than four years on Wednesday, and traders are rekindling hopes it may offer bigger-than-usual relief.
The Federal Reserve has been keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of slowing the economy enough to stifle high inflation. With having eased substantially from its peak two summers ago, the Fed has said it can turn more focus to bolstering the and .
How much to cut rates by will be a delicate balancing act for the Fed: Lowering them relieves pressure on the economy but can also give inflation more fuel. Reports showed some underlying upward pressure may remain on inflation, which initially pushed traders to ratchet back expectations for the size of the Fed鈥檚 upcoming move.
On Friday, though, traders were seeing roughly a coin flip鈥檚 chance that the Fed could deliver a large cut of half of a percentage point, instead of the more traditional quarter of a point, according to data from CME Group. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%.
鈥淩ight now, the equity market is keying off the toss-up鈥� in the size of the Fed鈥檚 cut next week 鈥渁nd would probably be fine with either,鈥� said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
鈥淭hey care more about direction than magnitude, and rates falling should take pressure鈥� off companies鈥� expenses and stock prices, he said.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 3.65% from 3.68% late Thursday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell more sharply to 3.58% from 3.65%.
On Wall Street, home-furnishings company RH jumped 25.5% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. The company said demand has been gaining momentum each month 鈥渄espite operating in the most challenging housing market in three decades.鈥�
The housing market has been contending with high , though they鈥檝e been easing since the spring on expectations for coming rate cuts. Shoppers have also generally been beaten down as prices continue to rise across the economy, though a preliminary reading on U.S. consumer sentiment on Friday came in better than economists expected.
Oracle pared a big early gain to inch up 0.4% after giving long-term financial forecasts that analysts said topped their expectations. That brought the software company鈥檚 gain to 14.3% for the week, which it began with a better-than-expected profit report for the latest quarter.
Technology stocks were generally the market鈥檚 main drivers this week, particularly and that struggled earlier this summer on concerns their prices had shot too high in the frenzy around artificial intelligence. Nvidia rallied 15.8% over the week despite slipping 0.1% on Friday.
On the losing end of Wall Street Friday was Boeing, which lost 3.7% as aircraft assembly workers walked off the job. overwhelmingly to go on strike and reject the troubled aerospace giant鈥檚 tentative contract that would have increased wages by 25% over four years.
Adobe fell 8.5%, even though the company also reported better profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said investors were more focused on its financial forecasts for the current quarter, where some trends looked to be falling short of expectations.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 30.26 points to 5,626.02. The Dow gained 297.01 to 41,393.78, and the Nasdaq composite added 114.30 to 17,683.98.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.
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AP Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.
Stan Choe, The Associated Press
