NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2021) Wall Street stocks closed up on Friday but heavy losses in two previous days or more on fears about US inflation left the market with its first weekly loss in six.
"It's impossible not to look at everything this week through the lens of inflation, most notably in the US," Craig Erlam, analyst at online trading platform OANDA, said. "In many ways, stock markets have performed remarkably against the backdrop of high inflation and higher rates to come. Central banks and low inflation have been a backstop for years, the next year is going to look very different."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a blue-chip index which groups mostly industrial stocks, closed up 179 points, or 0.5%, at 36,100. But three previous days of losses weighed on the Dow to pull it down 0.6% on the week, after a previous five-week record-breaking run that gave the index a net gain of 6%.
The S&P 500, which represents the top 500 US stocks, settled up 34 points, or 0.7%, at 4,683. The index fell sharply between Tuesday after Wednesday, leaving it with a net weekly loss of 0.3%. Prior to that, the S&P 500 rose a total of 8% over a five-week stretch filled with record highs.
The Nasdaq Composite Index, which groups Big Tech Names such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, finished the day up 157 points, or 1%, at 15,861. Like the S&P, the Nasdaq stumbled between Tuesday and Wednesday, after repeatedly hitting record highs during a five-week rally that boosted the tech-laced index by almost 10%.
The US Consumer Price Index, which represents a basket of products ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, rose 6.2% during the year to October, the Labor Department reported earlier this week. It was the fastest growth of the so-called CPI since November 1990, an acceleration driven mostly by pump prices of fuel running at seven-year highs.
The University of Michigan poll results revealed earlier on Friday that consumer sentiment among Americans was at its lowest in a decade as many expected vastly reduced spending power in the coming years due to price pressures. But the poll results also revealed that political partisanship had muted the impact of inflation in the United States, with supporters of President Joe Biden and his Democratic party more accepting of the situation versus rivals tied to the Republican party. The muted inflationary impact was one reason for Wall Street's rebound on Friday.�
