Stock Market Today: Investors Look on the Bright Side

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Stocks inched up at the opening bell of the last trading day of a good week for the global economy and financial markets.

Though consumers aren't yet seeing peace dividends in the trade war's apparent aftermath, and questions remain about the near- and long-term implications of the Trump administration's tariff deployment, it's a "risk-on" feeling heading into the weekend.

Investors, traders and speculators are feeling better about financial markets this week. "The more telling streak extended yesterday," as CappThesis founder Frank Cappelleri notes.

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"The S&P 500 Index has now gone 18 consecutive sessions without a 1% decline — the longest stretch of 2025, surpassing the previous mark of 17 from January 28 to February 20."

Indeed, the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) – popularized as the "fear gauge" – is now down from above 60 in early April to 17.33, and well within its "normal" range of 12 to 20.

By the closing bell, the broad-based S&P 500 Index was holding 0.7% daily and 5.3% weekly gains, with all of the 11 sectors in positive territory over what's now a five-day winning streak.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.5% Friday and has gained 7.2% since Monday, helped along by a resurgent Nvidia (NVDA) and renewed optimism about the potential for artificial intelligence to revolutionize the way we do everything.

And the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 0.8% for the day and 3.4% for the week, despite the heavy downside weight of one particularly troubled health care stock.

No turn for sentiment

Preliminary results for May from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers show a fifth straight monthly decline to 50.8 from 52.2 in April. This will be the second-lowest print on record following the 50.0 for June 2022, and sentiment is down nearly 30% since January 2025.

Interviews for the survey were conducted between April 22 and May 13, "closing two days after the announcement of a pause on some tariffs on imports from China."

The Current Economic Conditions Index was 57.6 vs 59.8 in April. The Index of Consumer Expectations was 46.5 vs 47.3. One-year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.7%, while five-year expectations reached 4.6% from 4.4%.

"Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers' thinking about the economy," survey director Joanne Hsu said in the release.

Housing data is mixed

The Census Bureau said on Friday that new housing starts increased by 1.6% to an annualized rate of 1.36 million in April, in line with the consensus forecast. Housing starts declined by 11.4% month over month in March.

Meanwhile, building permits in April were a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.41 million, down 4.7% from March and 3.2% from April 2024.

"Although the monthly bounce in overall starts is an encouraging sign that projects continued to move forward despite Liberation Day volatility," write Wells Fargo economists Charlie Dougherty and Ali Hajibeigi, "a surprisingly steep decline in building permits is the latest evidence that residential construction is slowing as builders contend with high mortgage rates, an elevated inventory-to-sales ratio and increased policy uncertainty."

Dougherty and Hajibeigi note that the decline in permits is consistent with recent weakness in the NAHB Housing Market Index. "All told," they conclude, "we continue to expect residential construction to pull back this year."

UNH, WMT, COIN bounce back

UnitedHealth Group (UNH) bounced back and was the top Dow Jones stock Friday with a gain of 6.4% after it fell 10.9% on Thursday and 17.8% on Tuesday as part of an eight-session losing streak. UNH was down 23.3% this week and has lost 42.3% so far in 2025.

The health care stock announced the immediate resignation of CEO Andrew Witty on Tuesday, and The Wall Street Journal reported the company's Medicare Advantage business is being investigated for fraud.

Walmart (WMT) continued to rally on its relatively good fiscal 2026 first-quarter earnings and full-year guidance on Friday with a gain of 2%.

The broad view among analysts, as well as investors, is that the world's biggest retailer, though it may have to boost prices in response, is as well-placed to manage tariffs as any business on Earth.

Coinbase Global (COIN) rebounded with a 9% gain a day after a 7.2% drubbing due to a data breach and the disclosure of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of the company's user numbers.

Coinbase said in a statement to Barron's that the SEC investigation is "a holdover investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting two and a half years ago, which was fully disclosed to the public."

NVO sheds a CEO

Novo Nordisk (NVO), the weight-loss drug stock that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, announced that CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen is stepping down. NVO stock was down 2.7% on the news. Novo Nordisk has had only five CEOs since its founding in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1923.

Board Chair Helge Lund cited NVO stock's performance over the past year and "market challenges" and noted that Novo Nordisk's controlling shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, wanted to "accelerate the CEO succession process."

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David Dittman is the former managing editor and chief investment strategist of Utility Forecaster, which was named one of "10 investment newsletters to read besides Buffett's" in 2015. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and the Villanova University School of Law, and a former stockbroker, David has been working in financial media for more than 20 years.