U.S. stock indexes finished higher on Friday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 closing out their third winning week in a row, bolstered by better-than-expected earnings from megacap technology companies and hopes that the Federal Reserve will tame inflation by hiking interest rates aggressively without causing a recession. The Dow industrials DJIA, +0.50% rose 176 points, or 0.5%, to end at 35,459, posting a weekly gain of 0.7%. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.99% advanced 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.90% rose over 2% for the week, according to Dow Jones Market Data. On Thursday, the blue-chip Dow snapped its longest winning streak since 1987 as U.S. Treasury yields TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.953% jumped after a news report said the Bank of Japan will discuss tweaking its yield-curve control policy at a policy board meeting on Friday. The Bank of Japan Friday said it would loosen its grip on yields of Japanese government bonds, a decision that pushed the yield on the 10-year JGB to its highest level since 2014, according to FactSet data.
In U.S. economic data, the personal consumption expenditures price index showed U.S. inflation eased 0.2% in June, compared with May’s increase of 0.3%. The rate of core inflation, which omits volatile food and energy prices, rose 4.1% in the last 12 months, down sharply from May’s 4.6% increase, but that still puts it at a more than two-year low. It’s still far above the Fed’s 2% target, however.
Meanwhile, consumer spending rose 0.5% in June in a sign of confidence as inflation eased again and the U.S. economy continued to grow.
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