Wall St. surges to end higher, but S&P 500, Dow fall over the week

• Financial

On Friday, all three key indices of Wall St. had gained across the board with growth-stock heavy Nasdaq jumping over 2.5 per cent, as upbeat quarterly earnings’ reports from Netflix Inc had tuned up the tone in the day’s Wall Street.

On top of that, Google parent Alphabet rose sharply following an announcement that the online advertisement industry behemoth would be slashing as many as 12,000 jobs. If truth is to be spoken, in the day’s dazzling run of all three major indices came against the backdrop of a growing optimism that the US Fed might just pause its rate-hike cycle at the January 31-February 1 policy meet following a flurry of dismal economic data.

On Friday, US NAR (National Association of Realtors) data had confirmed that the US housing market had entered into a recession, as first-time buyers stayed at the bay amid a rapid upsurge in mortgages. Data from US NAR had unveiled that US existing home sales had tumbled to a nearly 12-year-low, while earlier in the week, Government data had shown that US retails sales were slumped to a nearly 12-months low, raising hopes of an ease in the US Fed's ultra-hawkish monetary policy.

The latest rise in mortgage rates took place well in an alignment with the US Fed’s hawkish rate-hike policy.

Wall St. gains as on upbeat Netflix earnings’ report

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St.

wind-down, trade-sensitive Dow gained 1.0 per cent to 33,375.49 and Wall Street bellwether S&P 500 soared 1.89 per cent, while tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 2.66 per cent to 11,140.43. Meanwhile, meanwhile, addressing that the day’s upward spiral could be stemmed of a buy-the-dip frenzy, a managing partner at Kace Capital Advisors in Boca Raton, Florida, Ken Polcari said, “Today’s action is probably because we had three down days so it got into a little bit of an oversold position and they are just doing a little bit of bargain hunting today.

If people are viewing an opportunity, if they are getting more comfortable with the Fed’s narrative... investors are starting to buy into that narrative and saying 'OK that is the way it is, let’s look at the stocks that got really beaten up' because the market is a discounting mechanism”.