Stock Market Today: It’s Mostly Onward and Upward for Equities
Early on Friday, the S&P 500 was less than a point from reaching a new all-time high. Earnings and guidance generally reflect solid ground-level conditions, and incoming data still present, at worst, a fair-to-middling macro picture. At the end of an up-and-down trading session, the S&P 500 was little changed. But that was enough for the widely watched stock market gauge to wrap up an eventful week in positive territory.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield continued its retreat and the dollar weakened, as well, after the Census Bureau said retail sales were down by 0.9% in January. That was more than the 0.2% decline the Wall Street consensus expected.
Raymond James Chief Economist Eugenio J. Alemán described the headline number as “overall bad for economic growth during the first month of the year because inflation was also much higher than expected, which will make real growth in retail much weaker.”
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Wells Fargo economists Tim Quinlan and Shannon Grein, noting that “some context is warranted,” suggest “the data may say more about the end of last year than the start of this one.”
Quinlan and Grein add that January’s reported decline “came with upward revisions to December and was after solid gains across retailers at year-end.” We may see “weak sales growth in Q1, but consumer fundamentals are still solid.”
Incoming data is noisy
One of the more common observations by economists and analysts of late is that incoming data around the turn of the year is generally noisy, whether it’s the Consumer Price Index, retail sales and/or industrial production.
“This result,” writes Alemán about retail sales last month, “underscores the noise in inflation during January.” The economist explains that “such a weak performance by retail trade is inconsistent with the strong inflation print.”
It’s something “Federal Reserve officials as well as markets are watching.”
“It’s a strange world we find ourselves in where the U.S. threatens pretty much every country with ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, as soon as April 1,” observes BMO Capital Markets Chief Economist Douglas Porter, “and that’s viewed as relatively good news by markets.”
Porter notes that President Donald J. Trump’s tariff plan “leaves time for ‘negotiation.'” And so “it was mostly onward and upward for global equities this week,” with bond yields flat to down and the buck “broadly faded” too.
At the same time, as Porter concedes, “There are of course some solid fundamental factors that are keeping markets on the straight and narrow.” The BMO economist attributes “the upswing in stocks to near-record highs following some softness around the turn of the year” to “generally positive Q4 earnings.”
For the record, the Federal Reserve Board reported Friday that industrial production was up 0.5% in January vs a consensus forecast of 0.3% growth. The December growth rate was revised up to 1.0%.
The Fed cited the resolution of the Boeing (BA) strike early in November and the impact of cold weather on heating demand and the utilities component in January.
After getting within 0.71 point of a new high, the S&P 500 Index closed down less than a point at 6,114. The index rose 1.5% this week.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was tops among the indexes on Friday, rising 0.4%, breaching a big round barrier and closing at 20,026. The Nasdaq added 2.6% since last Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.4% to close out the week at 44,546. But the blue-chip index was up 0.5% for the five days.
Next week is another relatively busy one for the economic calendar – even though Monday is a stock market holiday, with the equities and bond markets closed for Presidents’ Day.
Nvidia giveth, Nvidia taketh
The next big market-moving event – particularly in the aftermath of the DeepSeek AI bombshell from which equity indexes continue to recover – is probably the appearance of Nvidia (NVDA, +2.6%) on the earnings calendar on February 26.
Nvidia stock extended a modest winning streak to two on Friday. NVDA recently ceded the global market cap leadership spot to Apple (AAPL, +1.3%) but it has come well off the 2025 intraday low of $113.01 it hit on February 3.
That’s good for people who own the AI chipmaker and/or one of the tech ETFs that hold it.
Meanwhile, SoundHound AI (SOUN, -28.1%) fizzled after Nvidia’s most recent 13F filing showed it no longer holds a position in the voice-based AI technology outfit. Arm Holdings (ARM, -3.2%) suffered a…
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