STORY: U.S. stocks rebounded on Friday, with the Dow gaining more than 1.6%, the S&P 500 adding 2.1% and the Nasdaq climbing 2.6%.
Investors hunted for bargains at the end of a tumultuous week in which President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war fueled recession fears and doused risk appetite.
George Cipolloni is portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management.
“I think in part it’s a relief rally. There haven’t been any tariff headlines so far [today]. I think secondarily, the consumer confidence number coincidentally came in. It was weak. And I think the market kind of wanted some kind of weakness because that may be the impetus for the Fed to make a move at some point.”
Data Friday showed consumer sentiment plummeted to its most pessimistic level in nearly two years, with one-year inflation expectations spiking to 4.9%.
Despite Friday’s stock bounce, the S&P and Nasdaq notched their fourth straight weekly losses.
And safe-haven gold rose above $3,000 an ounce level for the first time.
Among individual movers, shares of Tesla rose nearly 4% following a report on the EV-maker’s plans to produce a lower-cost version of its best-selling Model Y in Shanghai, aiming to regain ground lost during a price war in its second-largest market.
And Nvidia’s shares jumped 5.3% ahead of next week’s GPU Technology Conference, which is expected to culminate in a hotly anticipated keynote address from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
