People walk by the New York Stock Exchange, left, Tuesday, July 21, 2020. Stocks are drifting again on Wall Street Friday, Aug. 21, following a mixed set of data on the economy, as a record-breaking but wishy-washy week of trading closes out. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
By Stan Choe and Alex Veiga
Updated 4:54 pm ET
Tech has remained remarkably resilient through the pandemic and continued to churn out big profits as work-from-home and other tech-friendly trends accelerate. Apple, which this week became the first U.S. company to have a market value of more than $2 trillion, rose 5.2 percent.
Big tech stocks, which generally have strong balance sheets and deliver strong growth, will likely continue to be attractive to investors as long as there are questions about economic growth, said Krosby.
"One of the most important factors in this market and for the broadening of the market in order to include those names that have not participated is: You want to see the unemployment landscape heal, and you want to see those initial unemployment claims come down," she said. "That's a major focus for analysts because we're a consumer-led economy. People need jobs in order to consume."
Deere was another big winner after it reported profit for the latest quarter that was double what Wall Street expected. Its shares rose 4.4 percent.
The Federal Reserve is continuing to prop up markets and the economy by keeping interest rates at nearly zero and buying reams of bonds. But stimulus from Congress has lapsed, and Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to haggle.
Investors say the economy and markets need another round of big support from Congress for the recovery to continue.
"Ultimately, it will take some combination of bad data, bad markets and good politics to break the impasse," economist Ethan Harris wrote in a BofA Global Research report. "Meanwhile, every passing week without meaningful legislation lengthens the mini-recession. This is not the kind of August break this economy needs."
Beyond Capitol Hill, investors are also waiting for the latest developments in the rising tensions between the world's two largest economies.
China's Commerce Ministry on Thursday said that Chinese and U.S. trade envoys will hold a meeting by phone "in the near future" to discuss an agreement aimed at resolving their tariff war. No details on timing were given.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 0.63 percent from 0.64 percent late Thursday.
In European stock markets, Germany's DAX slipped 0.5 percent. France's CAC 40 fell 0.3 percent, while the FTSE 100 in London lost 0.2 percent.
Earlier, Asian markets closed higher. Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.2 percent, South Korea's Kospi rose 1.3 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3 percent.
Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 48 cents to settle at $42.34 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 55 cents to $44.35 per barrel.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
