US stock markets delivered a second straight week of gains despite continuing concerns about inflation and higher bond rates.
Over the week, the Dow Jones gained 1.6% and moved back above 35,000 points.
The S&P 500 climbed 1.8% and the Nasdaq outperformed, jumping 2.2% with financials a key contributor to the sustained strength.
Retail sales surprised to the positive, moving 0.7% higher in the month and 14% year-over-year.
Goldman’s record year
The banking sector has opened reporting season with a bang, with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) delivering its best full-year revenue result, up 30% on 2020 levels, despite only being nine months in the year.
Goldman Sachs’ consumer business is also performing well with its Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) credit card and neobank division seeing sales growth of 35%.
It was a similar story at JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) where investment banking profit bounced 52% as the bull market for deals, SPACs, IPOs and everything in between moves to another level.
Friday’s US stock market movers
These reports drove the Dow Jones’ outperformance on Friday, which finished 1.1% higher, beating the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, up 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) also reached a short-term high, jumping 3% ahead of this week’s earnings result.
Here’s how other popular US stocks performed on Friday to close out the week.
- Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) up 7.9%
- Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) up 3.6%
- Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) up 3.3%
- Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) down 1.2%
- Walgreens (NASDAQ: WBA) down 3.6%
- Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) down 16.8%
Back home on local markets, the ASX 200 is set to follow this positive lead to open higher on Monday. For all the latest, check out my ASX 200 morning report.
