Broad Rally Spreads the Wealth

A widespread rally swept Wall Street on Friday, lifting far-reaching corners, to close a tumultuous week in which stocks that had been left behind for much of this year's record-setting run wrested the spotlight back from the market's biggest stars. The rally was helped by encouraging reports on inflation and on profits at 3M and other big US companies, per the AP.

• The Dow rose 654.27 points, or 1.6%, to 40,589.34.
• The S&P 500 rose 59.88 points, or 1.1%, to 5,459.10, on its best day in seven weeks.
• The Nasdaq rose 176.16 points, or 1%, to 17,357.88.

Big Tech behemoths and smaller stocks posted gains. That's a departure from recent trading, in which a divide deepened between the handful of elite stocks that dominated the market for much of this year and almost everyone else. Nvidia rose 0.7% to trim its loss for the week to 4.1%. Most of the other members of the small group of stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" also climbed to claw back some of their losses from earlier in the week. They were under pressure after the latest profit reports from Tesla and Alphabet raised worries that investors had gotten carried away in their frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology and taken Magnificent Seven prices too high. Because those seven stocks are so massive in size, they were the main reason the S&P 500 set dozens of all-time highs this year, and they masked weakness elsewhere in the market.

Norfolk Southern rose 10.9% to erase what had been a loss for the year so far after the rail company reported better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It got a boost from insurance payments related to last year's disastrous East Palestine, Ohio, derailment. The company also made progress in reducing its expenses and improving efficiency. 3M leaped 23% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind the Scotch-Brite and Nexcare brands also raised the bottom end of its forecasted range for profit for the full year of 2024. Market watchers have been hoping for just such a broadening of gains because a market with many stocks rising is seen as healthier than one lifted by just a handful of dominating elites. (More Wall Street stories.)