U.S. stocks ended higher on Friday (May 8), fueled by a better-than-expected jobs report and a major partnership in the semiconductor industry.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 12.19 points, or 0.02 percent, to 49,609.16. The S&P 500 added 61.82 points, or 0.84 percent, to 7,398.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index increased by 440.88 points, or 1.71 percent, to 26,247.08.
Six of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors ended in the green, with technology and consumer discretionary leading the gainers by rising 2.74 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, utilities and health led the laggards by dropping 0.91 percent and 0.86 percent, respectively.
The semiconductor industry provided a massive tailwind for the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Shares of chipmakers rallied Friday afternoon following a Wall Street Journal report that Apple and Intel reached a deal for Intel to provide chips for a portion of Apple's device lineup. On the news, Intel stock soared nearly 14 percent, while Apple shares rose over 2 percent.
Investor sentiment also received a lift from the April employment data. U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 115,000 for the month. While this was a deceleration from the unusually strong 185,000 jobs created in March, it comfortably beat the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 55,000, suggesting the labor market remains resilient despite broader economic headwinds.
The report shows the labor market has been "pretty much stable for a year, year and a half," Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said in a CNBC interview. "I characterize that we've been stable without being good ... The unemployment rate has been stable, the hiring rate's been stable, the layoff rate's been stable, the vacancy rate has been stable. So, I still think there's not a lot of evidence that the job market is falling apart."
Despite the broader market gains, several individual companies faced post-earnings pressure. Cloudflare plummeted 23.62 percent. In the travel and AI infrastructure sectors, Expedia Group pulled back 9.02 percent and CoreWeave lost 11.4 percent.
(Source: Xinhua)
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