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US stocks rose on Friday, ending a five-day losing streak.
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The consumer discretionary and technology sectors led gains, signaling a shift toward risk.
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Positive ISM manufacturing data and political stability with Mike Johnson’s re-election helped push stocks higher.
U.S. stocks rose on Friday, ending a five-day losing streak for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100.
Risk-on stocks in the consumer discretionary and technology sectors drove the market higher.
Stocks hit session highs around the same time Congressman Mike Johnson was re-elected House speaker, indicating that infighting within the Republican Party may be tamer than in previous months.
A blog post from Microsoft President Brad Smith, who said the company expects to spend $80 billion on data centers in 2025 amid an ongoing AI frenzy, also helped lift technology stocks on Friday.
“Since the invention of electricity, the United States has not had the opportunity it has today to harness new technology to energize the country’s economy,” Smith said.
Nuclear stocks rose amid a burst of analyst enthusiasm for the sector related to demand for AI data centers. Shares of Constellation Energy Group and Vistra Corp. rose 4% and 8.5%, respectively. Constellation announced a $1 billion deal Thursday to provide power to more than a dozen government agencies.
Chip titan Nvidia jumped more than 4% on the session.
Investors were encouraged by December ISM manufacturing data, which hit 49.3%, marking a nine-month high. That was well above economists’ estimates of 48.0% and above November’s reading of 48.4%.
Looking ahead to next week, investors will focus on several economic updates, including jobless claims, preliminary consumer confidence and the US jobs report for December.
Here is where the US indices were at the 4:00 pm close on Friday:
This is what happened today: