US stocks rally as bond yields retreat
Wall Street stocks concluded a volatile week on a buoyant note on Friday, rallying as US Treasury bond yields retreated from multi-year peaks. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note, a proxy for Federal Reserve interest rates, pulled back somewhat following a Wall Street Journal report that said some Fed officials want to discuss slowing the pace of rate rises at the November central bank meeting. The report suggested the Fed could soon pivot from a "super aggressive stance to a less aggressive stance," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare. Stocks rose following the Wall Street Journal report, adding gains throughout the day. The Dow Jones finished up 2.5 percent, or about 750 points, at 31,082. The S&P 500 gained 2.4 percent to 3,752, while the Nasdaq advanced 2.3 percent to 10,859. Besides the report on a potential Fed pivot, O'Hare said investors were generally cheered by an earnings season that has been "better than feared" so far. An exception was Snap, which sank 28.1 percent after reporting a US$360 million quarterly loss in results that showed that online advertisers are tightening their budgets. The news also was a drag on Twitter, which tumbled 4.9 percent. The drop in Twitter also came after reports that the Biden administration was weighing a national security review of Elon Musk's proposed US$44 billion takeover of Twitter and that Musk plans deep staffing cuts at the social media platform after he closes the proposed deal. (AFP)