Wall Street Hits Record High

Wall Street returned to record heights on Friday to cap a punishing, two-year round trip dogged by high inflation and worries about a recession that seemed inevitable but hasn’t arrived, reported Stan Choe for the Associated Press (AP).

Texas Instruments climbed 4%. I Photo: Texas Instruments

The S&P 500, which is the centerpiece of many 401(k) accounts and the main measure that professional investors use to gauge Wall Street’s health, rallied 1.2% to 4,839.81.

It erased the last of its losses since setting its prior record of 4,796.56 at the start of 2022. During that time, it dropped as much as 25% as inflation soared to levels unseen since Thelonious Monk and Ingrid Bergman were still alive in 1981.

Several chip companies rose for a second straight day after heavyweight chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) delivered a better forecast for revenue this year than analysts expected.

Broadcom rose 5.9%, and Texas Instruments climbed 4%. All told, the S&P 500 rose 58.87 points to its record.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average set its own record a month earlier, and it gained 395.19, or 1.1%, Friday to 37,863.80. The Nasdaq composite jumped 255.32, or 1.7%, to 15,310.97, as also reported by Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong for AP.

WEEKLY FEATURE : Jose Mari Chan And The Christmas Anthem