Wall Street Gets Some Good News to End the Week

Relief arrived from a few directions Friday, encouraging investors to keep buying the dip and driving indexes up amid the chaos and uncertainty of a global trade war. One part came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A unit of the US Department of Labor, it reported that hiring remained robust despite Donald Trump’s rollout of “reciprocal tariffs.” The president’s now-famous tariff chart reveal kneecapped stocks worldwide and managed to destabilize a few pillars of the US economy. Since then, Trump has retreated on some fronts while pleading with Xi Jinping for a chat.

Given that China is now making noises about dealing on trade, all of that combined to spur some risk taking. US stocks not only tallied a second week of gains, but they sent the S&P 500 to its longest winning streak in more than 20 years. In doing so, equities managed to erase all the losses from last month.