Stock market news today: S&P 500 hits new 2023 closing high as stocks rise for 5th straight week

[ificandream]

Source: Yahoo Finance (via MSN)

Story by Hamza Shaban,Karen Friar •
3h

US stocks rose Friday afternoon, building on a stellar November, even as investors digested a warning from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that it would be "premature" to conclude that Fed rate hikes are over or "speculate" when cuts could begin.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) increased about 0.6% to a new 2023 closing high, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose roughly 0.8% or nearly 300 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) advanced 0.5%. All three indexes closed positive for a fifth straight week.

Stocks soared in November to post their best monthly performance since 2022 as conviction that the Fed was done with rate hikes morphed into growing hopes for rate cuts before the summer.
"It's one of the best months we've seen in the last decade," eToro US investment analyst Callie Cox told Yahoo Finance Live. "And I think it shows us how a lot of investors were caught off guard by the Fed's flexible stance after the Nov. 1 meeting."

Powell spoke Friday after October data showed inflation cooled to its lowest levels since 2021. Despite his pushback against talk of rate cuts, markets moved higher from earlier losses as he hinted the central bank could be done with rate hikes.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/stock-market-news-today-s-p-500-hits-new-2023-closing-high-as-stocks-rise-for-5th-straight-week/ar-AA1kRB6t

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When youre Repughlican friends keep saying the economy sucks under Biden, show them this.

[elleng]

1. GOOD!

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Up 9% for the year (Oct/Oct).

On my investments. Which I really have no clue what the mix of funds are producing....but I am OK with that. Also have a CD paying 5% that matures in 6 months.

[progree]

3. S&P 500 still 4.2% below its all-time closing high of Jan. 3, 2022

S&P 500 history: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/history?p=%5EGSPC
4595  -- Today's close
4797   -- all-time closing high, 1/3/22
Year-to-date: 12/31/22: 3840, today: 4595, up 19.75%
S&P 493: The S&P 500 without the Magnificent Seven: "basically flat" year-to-date (based on the article below from Monday)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-today-stocks-mixed-but-still-head-for-blowout-month-123520402.html

... The "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks — Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Tesla (TSLA), and Nvidia (NVDA) — make up roughly one-third of the S&P 500's market cap. Collectively they are up 80% this year. And when the S&P's growth is measured without them, the S&P493 is basically flat, according to an analysis by Apollo Global Management’s chief economist Torsten Slok.

... "AI is the latest shiny new toy," is how Slok characterises the massive growth of the Magnificent Seven. "In fact, S&P7 valuations are beginning to look similar to the...tech bubble in March 2000," he said, noting that the seven companies have an average P/E ratio above 50.
...

Bonds have done considerably worse over the last 2 years.

Anyway, I'll take the stock market gain. Although I don't have an S&P 500 fund, I have a Total U.S. Market fund that performs very close to the S&P 500 and is a superset of it (so it too contains the Magnificent Seven)

[SWBTATTReg]

4. Good! I hope tRUMP is having a heart attack due to the good stock market news. You would think by

talking about the economy w/ any republican, those that keep their heads buried in the sand, that they would finally get that the economy is doing good by all accounts but theirs only (and their stories keep changing, their goalposts keep changing, etc. so they won't look too stupid). I'd say it's way too late to keep republicans from looking and acting stupid. They already are. They should never be known as the Party of Economics, the Party of Business, since under a good economy, business generally does good.

Republicans have missed the boat again and again. Maybe they need to get rid of the loudmouths, the morons, etc., and start listening to those that really care about the economy, Democrats. I wonder since Democrats are finally get the pay raises that workers have demanded (and got over and during the COVID crisis), that the economy is booming and not just because of the lag in business caused by COVID.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Yes.

What so many don't understand is how the market goes up over time. On average, it's close to 10% each year, adjusted for inflation. Of course some years it's a lot less than that, but you won't go wrong going with the averages.