Stocks Surge Friday, Set for Biggest Weekly Gain Since Early November

Stocks moved sharply higher Friday morning, putting the S&P 500 and Dow Industrials on track to post their biggest weekly gains since early November.

The Dow and S&P 500 were each up 0.9% about an hour after the opening bell, while the Nasdaq Composite added 1.3%.

The major indexes closed lower on Thursday, one day after posting their best performance in two months, as big-name technology stocks slumped. The major indexes are poised to post weekly gains for the first time in three weeks.

Large-cap tech stocks were mostly higher this morning, led by AI investor favorite Nvidia (NVDA) and EV maker Tesla (TSLA), which rose 2.5% and 3.5%, respectively.

Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) were also gaining ground, while Meta Platforms (META) was down slightly.

Crypto-related stocks were also moving higher as bitcoin jumped above $104,000, its highest level since mid-December. Shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR), a software maker that has become one of the world's largest holders of bitcoin, were up more than 5%, while crypto exchange Coinbase Global (COIN) and bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) rose 4% and 7%, respectively.

Financial services stocks were also in focus this morning as several regional banks released quarterly results. Truist Financial (TFC) was up 5%, while Citizens Financial (CFG) and Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) rose slightly. Regionals Financial (RF) was down about 2%.

The economic data calendar is light on Friday. Earlier this week, better-than-expected inflation data revived investor hopes that the Federal Reserve will be in a position to cut interest rates again. The encouraging report on consumer prices sent Treasury yields sharply lower and gave stocks a big boost.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was down again this morning. The yield, which is correlated with interest rate expectations, was at 4.59% recently after falling as low as 4.57% this morning, its lowest level in two weeks.

Gold futures were down 0.3% at $2,745 an ounce, while crude oil futures fell 0.5%.