Stocks in the United States strengthened at the end of the week. They were mainly driven up by large technology companies after the favorable quarterly results of Alphabet and Microsoft. Investors were also encouraged by the inflation report. The dollar strengthened on the foreign exchange market.
The Dow Jones index, which includes shares of thirty leading American companies, added 0.40 percent today, the broader S&P 500 rose 1.02 percent. The Nasdaq Composite index, which includes many companies from the advanced technology sector, rose 2.03 percent.
For the whole week, the Dow Jones increased by 0.67 percent, the S&P 500 by 2.69 percent and the Nasdaq by 4.23 percent. Both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 posted their biggest weekly gains since early November last year.
Investors were pleased by Alphabet’s first-ever dividend, its $70 billion share buyback program and better-than-expected first-quarter results. Its shares rose to a record high, raising the market value of Google’s parent company above two trillion dollars.
Microsoft shares rose 1.8 percent after its third-quarter revenue and profit beat Wall Street analysts’ estimates. The expansion of artificial intelligence within its cloud services contributed to this.
Other large growth stocks also traded higher. Amazon and Nvidia rose 3.4 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively. However, Apple and Tesla saw declines.
The US dollar climbed to a new 34-year high against the Japanese yen today. It was partly supported by US inflation data, which showed no signs of easing and was in line with expectations. They thus confirmed expectations that the US central bank (Fed) will probably postpone the reduction of interest rates until later this year.
The yen also weakened against the dollar after the Bank of Japan left interest rates unchanged today, although it hinted at future increases. Around 10:00 p.m. yesterday, the dollar was up 1.45 percent against the yen. The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the dollar against a basket of six leading world currencies, strengthened by 0.4 percent to 106 points.
