NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is leading the U.S. stock market on Friday to the finish of another winning week and month.
The S&P 500 was virtually flat after giving up a modest gain from the morning. The index is still near its all-time high
set on Tuesday, and it's on track to close a third straight winning week and a sixth straight winning month, which would be its longest monthly winning streak since 2021.The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 102
points, or less than 0.2%, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.
Amazon led the way after jumping 10.3%. The retail giant was by far the strongest force pushing upward on the market after reporting profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ expectations. CEO Andy Jassy said growth for its booming cloud-computing business has reaccelerated back to a pace it hasn’t seen since 2022.
Because Amazon is so massive, worth roughly $2.4 trillion, its stock movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than almost any other company's.
Another highly influential stock, Apple, was having less of an effect even though it's bigger than Amazon. Apple, which is worth more than $4 trillion, was swinging between modest gains and losses and was most recently up 0.1%.
It likewise delivered a better profit report than analysts expected, though by not as big a margin as Amazon did. CEO Tim Cook said it benefited from strong revenue for both its iPhone lineup and its services offerings, which include its app store.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, online message board Reddit jumped 12.1% to erase losses from earlier in the week after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Coinbase Global rose 6.8% after the crypto exchange’s profit likewise topped expectations.
Outside of earnings reports, Netflix added 3.3% after the video streamer announced a move that could make its stock price more affordable but still leave all its investors holding the same amount. Netflix will undergo a 10-for-1 stock split, where it will give nine additional shares to every investor with one.
They helped offset a 4.8% drop for AbbVie, even though the medicine maker reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts pointed to how it's beating forecasts by less than before, and expectations may have been high after AbbVie's stock came into the day with a strong 28.4% gain for the year so far.
The pressure is on companies to deliver strong growth in profits to justify the huge gains their stock prices have made since April. Criticism has been growing that the stock market has become too expensive.
A day earlier, the S&P 500 slumped 1% as investors appeared unnerved by big increases in spending that Meta Platforms and Microsoft are planning as part of the investment spree underway in artificial-intelligence technology. Financial markets also appeared skeptical that President Donald Trump’s trade truce with China would put an end to tensions between the two countries.
Additional drops on Friday of 1.6% for Microsoft and 2.2% for Meta were two of the heaviest weights on the U.S. market.
In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.
Stocks fell 1.4% in Hong Kong and 0.8% in Shanghai after data showed factory activity in China contracted in October for a seventh straight month and at the fastest pace in six months.
Japan’s Nikkei 225, meanwhile, jumped 2.1% to another record after a report showed industrial production rose more in September than expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after their spurt higher in the middle of the week, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that another cut to interest rates in December “is not a foregone conclusion — far from it.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 4.09% from 4.11% late Thursday, but it’s still above the 3.99% level it was at before Powell’s warning.
Other central banks have halted cuts to rates or hinted at pauses recently, and “it seems this is it for the 2025 easing season in developed economies,” economists at Bank of America wrote in a BofA Global Research report.
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AP Business Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
