NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are heading toward the close of another winning week with some more modest gains on Friday.
The S&P 500 was 0.4% higher in early trading and on track for a third straight winning week following a mostly miserable April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 128 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.
The S&P 500 has returned within 0.4% of its record after coasting through relatively quiet trading following big gains at the end of last week. Revived hopes that the Federal Reserve may deliver cuts to interest rates this year drove the gains. So did a flood of stronger-than-expected reports on profits from big U.S. companies.
Gen Digital jumped 14.7% after joining the parade and reporting better profit for the first three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The cyber safety company, whose brands include Norton and LifeLock, also authorized a program to buy back up to $3 billion of its stock. It joins a lengthening list of companies announcing big such programs, which helps goose per-share earnings for investors.
Novavax more than doubled and shot 134.1% higher after announcing a deal with Sanofi that could be worth more than $1.2 billion. The agreement includes a license to co-commercialize Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, with some exceptions. Novavax also reported a slightly smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
They helped offset a drop of 9.7% for Akamai Technologies, which topped expectations for profit but fell short for revenue. The cloud-computing, security and content delivery company also lowered some of its financial forecast for the full year.
It said the strengthening of the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies is slicing into its business, along with slowing traffic growth across the industry. That helped overshadow its own announcement of a program to buy back up to $2 billion of its stock.
In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked higher but were relatively calm overall. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.48% from 4.46% late Thursday.
It’s been generally easing since topping 4.70% late last month. Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped pull yields lower after saying the central bank remains closer to cutting its main interest rate than hiking it despite a string of stubbornly high readings on inflation this year. The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate at the highest level in more than two decades in hopes of getting high inflation fully under control.
A cooler-than-expected jobs report at the end of last week, meanwhile, suggested the U.S. economy could pull off the tricky balancing act of staying solid enough to avoid a bad recession but not so strong that it worsens inflation.
In stock markets abroad, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.7% after the government reported the U.K. economy bounced back to growth at the start of the year. The performance was better than expected, and it snapped two straight quarters where the economy shrank.
In Japan, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.4% after a report showed strong auto exports whittled down the nation’s trade deficit and it racked up solid returns on overseas investments.
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.