Stock Market Today: Dow in Best Week Since June as Hopes on Slowing Hikes Emerge

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com -- The Dow rallied Friday, to close out its best week since June as hopes that the Federal Reserve could slow the pace of rate hikes helped cool the surge in Treasury yields and bolstered growth sectors of the market including tech.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2.5% or 748 points, the Nasdaq was up 2.31%, and the S&P 500 rose 2%.

Growth sectors of the market rebounded following a slump a day earlier as Treasury yields eased from session highs on bets that the Fed may consider slowing the pace of rate hikes.

“[I]nvestors are now considering a December hike of 50-75 bps,” Janney Montgomery Scott said. “Prior to today, sentiment was closer to a 75-100bps potential hike at the next meeting. This recalibration of expectations is what’s helping stocks today.”

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) rose, with the latter up more than 2% ahead of earnings from big tech next week.

Microsoft’s cloud business Azure is likely to take on added investor attention amid concerns the weakening macroeconomic backdrop is weighing on global enterprise and cloud spending.

Snapchat parent company Snap (NYSE:SNAP), however, slumped 28% after the social media company reported quarterly results that missed on the bottom line and withdrew fourth quarter guidance amid slowing advertising spend.

Snap is likely to be “range bound" amid ongoing macro headwinds, Goldman Sachs said in a note.

Other social media stocks fell sharply, with Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) in the red.

Consumer discretionary stocks were driven higher by a rise in Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and a rebound in Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) following a slump a day earlier.

Tesla’s rebound comes even as concerns mount that chief executive officer Elon Musk may be forced to sell more shares to fund the deal to buy Twitter.

Musk may need to sell an additional “$5 billion to $10 billion of Tesla stock” should financing talks fall through this week, Wedbush said in a note on Friday.

Energy was also among the biggest sector gainers, led by a more than 10% rise in Schlumberger NV (NYSE:SLB) after the oil field services firm reported better-than-expected quarterly results.