The S&P 500 held flat on Friday, but the index is on pace for its third straight weekly gain after crossing 7,800 for the first time this week. Strong second-quarter earnings and a shrugged-off retail sales miss kept the stock market steady into the close of the week.
The S&P 500 was relatively unchanged on Friday, edging up 0.1% after a record-setting session a day earlier. The Nasdaq Composite traded around the flatline, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was also flat.
Third straight weekly advance
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have advanced 0.6% for the week, putting them on track for a third consecutive positive week. The Dow, by contrast, is down 0.6% week to date.
The week already carried a milestone. The S&P 500 crossed 7,800 for the first time on Thursday, hitting an intraday all-time high of 7,816.70, and the benchmark closed at a record the prior trading day as well.
Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist at Partners Group, told CNBC: "The market is appropriately bullish right now", pointing to the strength of U.S. corporate earnings. She said she thinks the market came to realize it maybe did not appropriately price in those risks.
Earnings growth offsets a retail sales miss
With more than 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported second-quarter results, earnings growth from the year-earlier period is tracking around 50%, according to FactSet. Amoroso also noted that software has rallied and rebounded.
Investors on Friday shrugged off retail sales numbers for July, which showed an unexpected 0.6% decline on the month, missing the 0.1% increase economists polled by Dow Jones had expected. Excluding autos, sales fell 0.3%, against an expected 0.2% gain.
Source: CNBC
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