Up-and-Down Stocks End the Day Higher

More swings hit Wall Street on Friday, except the US stock market finished higher this time.

• The Dow rose 493.15 points, or 1.1%, to 46,245.41, closing the week down 1.9%.
• The S&P 500 rose 64.23 points, or 1%, to 6,602.99, ending the week down 1.9%.
• The Nasdaq rose 195.03 points, or 0.9%, to 22,273.08, falling 2.7% for the week.

It was a fitting finish for a week that left the S&P 500 just 4.2% below its record but also forced investors to stomach the sharpest hour-to-hour swings since a selloff in April, the AP reports. The jarring moves are testing investors following a monthslong and remarkably smooth surge for stocks, and they come down to two basic questions, neither of which has been answered yet. Have prices for Nvidia, bitcoin, and other stars of Wall Street shot too high? And is the Federal Reserve done with its cuts to interest rates, which would boost the economy and prices for investments?

On the second question, financial markets found some assurance from a speech by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Markets perked up immediately after John Williams told a conference in Chile that he sees "room for a further adjustment" to interest rates. That could signal he'll vote for another cut to rates in December. What the Fed does is critical for Wall Street because stock prices ran to records through last month in part because of expectations for a series of reductions. Other Fed officials, though, have argued against a December cut given how high inflation remains. The uncertainty created by such sharp disagreement has triggered dramatic moves back and forth for markets.

On Friday, AI-linked stocks continued to swing, helping to drag the rest of the market behind them. Nvidia went from an initial gain to a drop of 4.3%, then swung back and forth before finishing with a loss of 1%, for example. Amazon went from an early loss to a gain of 1.6%. Bitcoin briefly plunged below $81,000 before pulling back toward $85,000. That's down from nearly $125,000 last month and brought it back to where it was in April, when markets were shaking because of Trump's tariffs. The vast majority of stocks on Wall Street rose despite such swings, with nearly 90% of stocks in the S&P 500 climbing. Their movements often get drowned out by Nvidia and other Big Tech stocks, which have much more effect on the S&P 500 because of their immense sizes.