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Wall Street ended an extraordinary and record-setting week Friday by surging higher again, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 index past a trading high set in March 2000 and thrusting the Dow Jones industrial past 13,900 for the first time.
But the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index lagged both in Friday’s session as it has in the broader recovery from the dot-com collapse at the start of the decade.
On Friday, investors seemed upbeat about earnings and takeover activity and only slightly disappointed by the Commerce Department’s report that retail sales dropped 0.9 percent last month. The June figure was weaker than anticipated and marked the steepest decline in nearly two years.
“I think investors are overstating their moves on a day-to-day basis but over the long term we continue to trend upward,” said Brian Levitt, corporate economist at OppenheimerFunds Inc.“We seem to be having knee-jerk reactions depending on the latest news and that makes sense following a long period of complacency,” Levitt said. Treasury bond prices rose, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note falling to 5.10 percent from 5.13 percent late Thursday.
Light, sweet crude rose $1.43 to $73.93 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.