US stocks ended a volatile week on the upside on Friday, with investors worrying about the global recovery and facing a new batch of housing and inflation data on the world’s largest economy.
“Financial markets continued to thrash around ... as investors remained generally risk-averse and indecisive about how the future would unfold,” US economists at IHS Global Insight said in a note to clients.
“These fears were exacerbated by the usual pundits proclaiming that the economic Armageddon that they had predicted for 2009, while delayed, would indeed finally explode onto the scene in the second half of 2010,” economists Nigel Gault and Brian Bethune said.
Over the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.51 percent to 10,211.07 points. The blue-chip index seesawed between losses and gains through Thursday, finally closing higher for a second day running on Friday.
The tech-rich NASDAQ rose 1.10 percent from the previous Friday to 2,243.60 points.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a broad measure of the markets, advanced 2.51 percent over the week to 1,091.60 points.
“It is pretty simple why the market got an uptick percent this week — because the week was relatively absent of any macroshocks coming from the eurozone,” Craig Peckham at Jefferies said.
Market sentiment improved slightly on the eurozone, where Greece’s debt crisis has exposed the troubled finances of other members of the currency-sharing bloc and sent the euro tumbling against the US dollar.
The BP oil-spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in US history, was expected to loom large again over the markets.
The British oil giant’s share price has plunged by as much as 49 percent, wiping tens of billions of dollars off its market value, since the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22 after a deadly explosion two days earlier.
The oil well continues to spew massive amounts of crude into the Gulf that have defied attempts at firm estimates.
The disaster has hammered other energy shares and raised speculation about BP’s long-term viability.
The markets likely will keep a close eye on the political ramifications of the crisis as US President Barack Obama’s administration and Congress hold meetings with BP leaders. The round began yesterday with Obama holding talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron by phone about the oil spill.
The White House summoned BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg to a meeting with Obama in Washington on Wednesday.
Investors will have a full calendar of economic data to scan in search of the direction of the world’s largest economy.
Wednesday will be charged, with reports due on last month’s housing starts and building permits, wholesale inflation and industrial production.
On Thursday, weekly initial jobless claims will provide a snapshot on the troubled labor market, where the unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent.
Consumer prices data on the same day will round out the inflation picture, while the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators may shed some light on the recovery outlook.
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