US stocks edged higher on Friday as technology companies and banks rose. The S&P 500 closed above 2,500 for the first time as stocks had one of their best weeks this year.
Stocks wobbled in early trading after the US Department of Commerce said retail sales slipped last month and the US Federal Reserve said industrial production dropped last month, mostly because of Hurricane Harvey.
However, big names such as Apple Inc and Boeing Co took the market higher.
Stocks made big gains on Monday as Hurricane Irma weakened and they did not do too much after that, but still wound up with their biggest weekly gain since the beginning of January.
Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer for BlackRock Inc’s global fixed income business, said retail sales and inflation have been weak because technological changes keep reducing the prices of clothes, food, travel and mobile phone plans.
That lowers measurements of sales revenue, such as the one the government released on Friday, but he said they keep people buying — even though the same technological changes can also lower people’s wages.
“We get everything cheaper than we used to because of the Internet and delivery mechanisms,” Rieder said. “The price is coming down so quickly that it’s helping demand.”
The S&P 500 on Friday gained 4.61 points, or 0.2 percent, to a record 2,500.23, an increase of 1.6 percent from 2,461.43 on Sept. 8.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday rose 64.86 points, or 0.3 percent, to end at 22,268.34, its fourth record close in a row and up 2.2 percent from a close of 21,797.79 a week earlier.
The NASDAQ Composite added 19.38 points, or 0.3 percent, to close at 6,448.47, rising 1.4 percent from 6,360.19 on Sept. 8.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks picked up 6.69 points, or 0.5 percent, to end at 1,431.71, an increase of 2.3 percent from 1,399.43 a week earlier.
Industrial production in the US last month fell 0.9 percent, the biggest drop in eight years, as Harvey knocked numerous oil refining, plastics and chemicals factories out of business for a time. Many of those factories are based in the Gulf Coast region that Harvey hit.
The Fed said the weather and flooding was responsible for almost all of the loss.
Apple picked up US$1.60, or 1 percent, to US$159.88 after three days of declines.
Chipmaker Nvidia Corp jumped US$10.71, or 6.3 percent, to US$180.11 and hard drive maker Western Digital Corp gained US$2.73, or 3.2 percent, to US$88.52.
Shares of software maker Oracle Corp absorbed their biggest loss in four years. The company’s first-quarter profit and sales were better than investors expected, but analysts were concerned about forecasts for its cloud-computing business. Oracle lost US$4.05, or 7.7 percent, to US$48.74.
Boeing rose US$3.77, or 1.5 percent, to US$249 as the aerospace company continued to set record highs. Its stock is up 60 percent this year.
Credit monitoring companies continued to fall as US Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would prevent the companies from charging fees to consumers who want their credit frozen.
In many states, the companies collect fees in return for freezing accounts.
Some consumers have chosen to freeze their credit after Equifax Inc said the personal information of 143 million Americans was exposed after a breach of its systems. They are trying to prevent identity thieves from using their information to open fraudulent accounts.
Equifax fell US$3.68, or 3.8 percent, to a two-year low of US$92.98. The stock began plunging on Sept. 8 after the company disclosed the breach, and this week it took its biggest weekly loss since the end of 1998.
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