Wall Street closes higher after business activity data

STORY: Wall Street closed higher on Friday, with all three major indexes posting weekly gains…

as a measure of business activity raced to a 31-month high in November, boosted by hopes for lower interest rates and more business-friendly policies from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration next year.

The Dow gained about one percent, the S&P 500 added about one third of one percent and the technology-heavy Nasdaq ended marginally higher.

The lack of leadership from the Magnificent 7 megacap tech stocks on Friday was another bright spot for the market, according to CBIZ Investment Advisory Services Chief Investment Officer Anna Rathbun.

“I think the market action today is sort of a continuation of what we saw yesterday, which is really a broadening out of gains in the S&P 500 and across mid cap and small caps. What I mean by broadening out is that it’s not the Mag sevens that are really leading the markets, it’s utilities. It is a consumer staples. It’s the other sectors that have been neglected for a long time. And also, small caps are also rallying yesterday and today. And so that kind of broadening is something that investors have been waiting for a long time. So, it is very nice to see.”

Stocks on the move included Gap which soared nearly 13% after the Old Navy parent raised its annual sales forecast and said the holiday season was off to a “strong start.”

Shares of Intuit fell more than five and a half percent after the TurboTax parent projected second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Thursday.

And shares of AI bellwether Nvidia lost ground, slipping more than three percent in choppy trading, following its quarterly forecast earlier this week that left some investors unimpressed.