News

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Dow and S&P 500 edged higher on Friday and ended a turbulent week with slight increases, helped by gains in Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) that offset a tumble by Nike (NYSE:NKE).

Athletic wear company Nike’s shares fell 6.3% and were the biggest drag on the Dow and the S&P 500 after it delivered a downbeat sales forecast and warned of delays during the holiday shopping season, blaming a supply chain crunch.

Shares of footwear retailer Foot Locker (NYSE:FL) also fell sharply.

On the flip side, Facebook climbed 2% and Tesla rose 2.7%. The S&P communication services sector climbed 0.7% and was the second-biggest sector gainer of the day after energy, up 0.8%.

Stocks bounced back from a sharp selloff at the start of the week tied in part to concerns over a default by China’s Evergrande and its potential risk to global financial markets.

On Friday, Evergrande’s electric car unit warned it faced an uncertain future unless it got a swift injection of cash, the clearest sign yet that the property developer’s liquidity crisis is worsening in other parts of its business.

“You’ve had a good recovery from the lows” this week, said Rick Meckler, partner, Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey.

“With rates this low – even if they are going to move up slowly – and with the fiscal stimulus you’ll probably see coming, I think investors still prefer stocks to any other asset class. Stocks remain in a weird way what investors see as the safe place.”

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve said it would reduce its monthly bond purchases “soon” and half of the Fed’s policymakers projected borrowing costs will need to rise in 2022.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 33.18 points, or 0.1%, to 34,798, the S&P 500 gained 6.5 points, or 0.15%, to 4,455.48 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.55 points, or 0.03%, to 15,047.70.

For the week, the Dow was up 0.6%, the S&P 500 gained 0.5% and the Nasdaq was near flat.

Shares of cryptocurrency-related firms Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) Global, MicroStrategy Inc, Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT) and Marathon Patent Group fell after China’s central bank put a ban on crypto trading and mining.

“It’s been a very volatile week to say the least, so I think going into the last week of September the volatility is likely to continue especially with the end-of-the-quarter window dressing,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

Investors are also looking for signs of progress on President Joe Biden’s spending and budget bills.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.50-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.40-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 21 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 82 new highs and 73 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 9.00 billion shares, compared with the 10.11 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.