Financial Markets                      05/16 15:28

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street cruised to the finish of its strong week on 
Friday, as U.S. stocks glided closer to the all-time high they set just a few 
months earlier, though it may feel like an economic era ago.

   The S&P 500 rose 0.7% for a fifth straight gain and closed out its third 
winning week in the last four. It's rallied back within 3% of its record set in 
February after briefly dropping roughly 20% below last month, thanks to 
building hopes that President Donald Trump will lower his tariffs against other 
countries after reaching trade deals with them.

   The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 331 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq 
composite climbed 0.5%.

   Trump's trade war had sent financial markets reeling worldwide because of 
twin dangers. On one hand, tariffs could slow the economy and drive it into a 
recession. On the other, tariffs could push inflation higher.

   This week featured some encouraging news on each of those fronts. The United 
States and China announced a 90-day stand-down in most of their punishing 
tariffs against each other, while a couple reports on inflation in the United 
States came in better than economists expected.

   It was "a week to remember," according to economists at Bank of America led 
by Claudio Irigoyen and Antonio Gabriel. But they also said they're not 
expecting a significant drop in volatility, and they're not changing 
big-picture forecasts.

   "There is still huge uncertainty regarding the impact of tariffs on economic 
activity and inflation," they said in a BofA Global Research report.

   That uncertainty has been hitting U.S. households and businesses, raising 
worries that they may freeze their spending and long-term plans in response, 
which would hurt the economy. The latest reading in a survey of U.S. consumers 
by the University of Michigan showed sentiment soured again in May, though the 
pace of decline wasn't as bad as in prior months.

   Perhaps more worryingly, expectations for coming inflation keep building, 
and U.S. consumers are now bracing for 7.3% in the next 12 months, according to 
the University of Michigan's preliminary survey results. That's up from a 
forecast of 6.5% a month before.

   When everyone expects inflation to be high, it could kick off a vicious 
cycle of behavior that only worsens inflation.

   To be sure, only some of the University of Michigan's survey responses for 
the preliminary May reading came after the United States and China announced 
their 90-day truce.

   On Wall Street, Charter Communications rose 1.8% after it said it agreed to 
merge with Cox Communications in a deal that would combine two of the country's 
largest cable companies. The resulting company will change its name to Cox 
Communications and keep Charter's headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

   CoreWeave jumped 22.1% after Nvidia disclosed that it had increased its 
ownership stake in the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running 
artificial-intelligence workloads. Nvidia now owns 7% of CoreWeave, up from its 
nearly 6% stake before CoreWeave's initial public offering of stock in March.

   Novo Nordisk's stock that trades in the United States fell 2.7% after the 
Danish company behind the Wegovy drug for weight loss said that Lars Fruergaard 
Jorgensen will step down as CEO and that the board is looking for his 
successor. The company cited "recent market challenges" and how the stock has 
been performing recently.

   All told, the S&P 500 rose 41.45 points to 5,958.38. The Dow Jones 
Industrial Average climbed 331.99 to 42,654.74, and the Nasdaq composite gained 
98.78 to 19,211.10.

   In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady.

   The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.44% from 4.45% late 
Thursday and from more than 4.50% the day before that. Lower bond yields can 
encourage investors to pay higher prices for stocks and other investments.

   The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for 
action by the Federal Reserve, rose to 3.99% from 3.96%. It had been as low as 
3.93% earlier in the morning, before the release of the University of 
Michigan's survey.

   Hope remains that this week's better-than-expected signals on inflation 
could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates later this 
year if high tariffs drag down the U.S. economy.

   In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly in Europe after finishing 
mixed in Asia.

   Tokyo's Nikkei 225 inched down by less than 0.1% after the government 
reported that Japan's economy contracted at a faster rate than expected in the 
first quarter of the year.

   ___

   AP Writers Jiang Junzhe and Matt Ott contributed.

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