By Heard Editors

What Happened in Markets Today

Stocks rallied on the last day of a wild week. The S&P 500 index was up 1.8% on Friday, and closed out the week up 5.7%.

Major indexes are still down overall in April. S&P 500 shares are off 4.4% this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 4.3% and the Nasdaq Composite has lost 3.3%.

China boosted its own tariffs. Beijing raised the import levy on U.S. goods to 125%, but signaled it would not continue to match any U.S. increase.

Consumer sentiment continues to worsen. The share of Americans who expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead was at the highest since 2009 in April. Expectations for inflation were the highest in 44 years.

Banks including JPMorgan Chase warned of economic risk. Yet lenders' shares gained on the the first day of earnings reports, as banks took only modest defensive actions on credit risk, and said markets appeared orderly. The KBW Nasdaq Bank index rose 0.6%.

Gold hit a new record high. On Friday the precious metal's front-month futures contract closed above $3,200 an ounce for the first time ever. Mining company Newmont was a top performer in the S&P 500 on Friday, adding almost 8%.

The U.S. dollar had a very tough week. The currency was off by about 2.4% over the five days against a basket of peers.

This analysis comes from the Journal's Heard on the Street team. Subscribe to their free daily afternoon newsletter here.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 11, 2025 17:09 ET (21:09 GMT)

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