Major United States benchmark averages finished in a mixed fashion on Friday, with the Nasdaq snapping a three-day losing streak as investors returned to major technology stocks following a sharp sell-off that had dragged Wall Street to its worst session in more than a month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 309.7 points, or 0.7%, to 47,147.5. The S&P 500 ended fractionally lower, down 3.4 points or 0.05% to 6,734.1. The Nasdaq Composite gained 30.2 points or 0.1% to close at 22,900.6, helped by renewed appetite for leading artificial intelligence and cloud names.
The tech sector managed to regain some poise after several major players slumped on Thursday, with Nvidia up 1.8% and Oracle adding 2.4% after steep losses in the previous session, while Palantir Technologies gained 1.1% and Tesla added 0.6%
Despite Friday’s stabilisation, the Nasdaq ended the week down 0.5%. The S&P 500 and Dow, however, managed modest gains of 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively.
Rate-cut optimism continued to fade amid signs that inflation is proving stickier than policymakers would like, partly due to U.S. President Donald Trump's global tariff regime.
Markets are now assigning a 44.4% chance of a 25bp rate cut in December, down from 67% a week ago, according to the CME Group FedWatch Tool.
Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid reinforced those concerns on Friday, noting, "I do not think further cuts in interest rates will do much to patch over any cracks in the labour market - stresses that more likely than not arise from structural changes in technology and immigration policy."
"Cuts could have longer-lasting effects on inflation as our commitment to our 2% objective increasingly comes into question."
Schmid was one of two dissenting voices when the Fed trimmed its benchmark rate by 25bps in October.
Meanwhile, Nvidia will remain in the spotlight ahead of its quarterly results on Wednesday. Investors are keen to assess whether fierce competition in the AI hardware race continues to drive the chipmaker’s earnings momentum.
Among individual stocks, Warner Bros Discovery gained 4% after the entertainment group amended CEO David Zaslav’s employment agreement amid an ongoing strategic review.
Cidara Therapeutics shares surged 105.4% after Merck agreed to acquire the company in a deal valued at nearly US$9.2 billion.
In bond markets, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 0.8% to 4.148%, while the 2-year yield climbed 0.5% to 3.608%.
