Wall Street flirts with its all-time high

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is flirting with its all-time high on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3% and was on track earlier in the day to squeak past its record closing level, which was set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 187 points, or 0.4%, as of 1:50 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.

If the S&P 500 finishes the day at a record, it would mark the latest time the U.S. stock market has powered past what appeared to be a debilitating set of worries. Most recently, those concerns centered on what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates, whether too many dollars are flowing into artificial-intelligence technology and if sharp drops for cryptocurrencies would bleed over into other markets.

Renewed hopes for a cut to interest rates by the Fed at its meeting next week helped stocks recover those losses, which included some of their worst days since their sell-off during April. So did a continuing parade of companies saying they're making bigger profits than analysts had expected.

Ulta Beauty helped lead the market on Friday and jumped 12.9% after the retailer reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. CEO Kecia Steelman said its customers are broadly feeling pressure, but Ulta saw growth across its categories, particularly in e-commerce. It raised its forecast for revenue over the full year.

Another encouraging signal for the holiday shopping season came from Victoria’s Secret & Co. It delivered a milder loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it likewise raised its forecast for sales over the full year. Its stock rallied 14.9%.

Warner Bros. Discovery was also strong and rose 5.8%. Netflix said it would buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion in cash and stock following its pending split from Discovery Global.

The deal for the company behind HBO Max, “Casablanca” and “Harry Potter” is not a sure thing, though. It could raise fears at the U.S. government about too much industry power residing at Netflix. Shares of Netflix initially fell more than 5% after the deal was announced, then briefly erased all of the loss before falling again, by 3.5%.

Paramount Skydance, which earlier had been seen as a front-runner to buy Warner Bros., fell 7.6%.

Also on the losing end of Wall Street was SoFi Technologies. The financial technology company fell 6.7% to $27.62 after saying it would add $1.5 billion worth of its stock into the market in order to raise cash. It's selling the stock at a price of $27.50 per share.

The U.S. stock market broadly has been much quieter this week, a respite following earlier weeks of sharp and scary swings.

After some back and forth, the widespread expectation among traders is that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week in hopes of shoring up the slowing U.S. job market. If it does, that would be the third cut of the year.

Investors love lower interest rates because they boost prices for investments and can juice the economy. The downside is that they can worsen inflation, which is stubbornly remaining above the Fed’s 2% target.

Economic reports released on Friday did little to change expectations for a coming cut. One said that an underlying measure of inflation that the Fed prefers to use was at 2.8% in September, exactly as economists expected.

A separate report said U.S. consumers appear to be downgrading their expectations for inflation coming in the near future. They're now forecasting 4.1% inflation for the year ahead, down from their forecast of 4.5% last month, according to the University of Michigan.

That's the lowest such reading since January, which is important because heightened expectations for inflation can create a vicious cycle that only worsens inflation.

In the bond market, Treasury yields gained ground. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.14% from 4.11% late Thursday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across much of Europe and rose in Asia Friday.

Germany’s DAX returned 0.6%, and South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.8% for two of the world’s bigger gains.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.1% after data showed household spending in Japan fell 3.0% in October from a year earlier. It was the sharpest drop since January 2024. Japanese markets have been shaky recently after the Bank of Japan hinted that hikes to interest rates may be coming.

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AP Writer Teresa Cerojano contributed.