US stocks soar to their best day since May as the Dow tops 50,000 and bitcoin stops plunging

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market roared back on Friday, as technology stocks recovered much of their losses from earlier in the week and bitcoin halted its plunge, at least for now.

The S&P 500 rallied 2% for its best day since May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,206 points, or 2.5%, and topped the 50,000 level for the first time, while the Nasdaq composite leaped 2.2%.

Chip companies helped drive the widespread rally, and Nvidia jumped 7.8% to trim its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10%. Broadcom climbed 7.1% and erased its drop for the week.

They were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, and they benefited from hopes for continued spending by customers diving into artificial-intelligence technology. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, said late Thursday it expects to spend about $200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”

Such immense spending, similar to what Alphabet announced a day earlier, is creating concerns of its own, though. The question is whether all those dollars will create big enough profits to make the investments worth it. With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock dropped 5.6%.

Even with Friday’s surge, the S&P 500 still fell to its third losing week in the last four. Besides worries about spending by Big Tech companies, which are Wall Street’s most influential stocks, concerns about AI potentially stealing customers from software companies also hurt the market. Software stocks got hit particularly hard after AI firm Anthropic released free tools to automate things like legal services.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, steadied following a weekslong plunge that had sent it more than halfway below its record price set in October. It climbed back above $70,000 after briefly dropping close to $60,000 late Thursday.

Prices in the metals market also calmed a bit following their own wild swings. Gold rose 1.8% to settle at $4,979.80 per ounce, while silver added 0.2%.

Their prices suddenly ran out of momentum last week following jaw-dropping rallies, which were driven by investors clamoring for something safe to own amid worries about political turmoil, a U.S. stock market that critics called expensive and huge debt loads for governments worldwide. By January, prices for gold and silver were surging so quickly that critics called it unsustainable.

On Wall Street, the recovery for bitcoin helped stocks of companies enmeshed in the crypto economy. Robinhood Markets jumped 14% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Crypto trading platform Coinbase Global rose 13%. Strategy, the company that’s made a business of buying and holding bitcoin, soared 26.1%.

Stocks of smaller U.S. companies also helped lead the market, along with companies whose profits depend on U.S. households spending more money. They benefited from potentially encouraging data on how U.S. consumers are feeling.

A preliminary report from the University of Michigan suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is improving slightly, when economists were expecting to see a drop. The improvement was strongest among households that own stocks, which are benefiting from the S&P 500 setting a record late last month.

To be sure, sentiment “remained at dismal levels for consumers without stock holdings,” according to Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu.

Airline stocks strengthened with hopes that more confidence among U.S. households will translate into more spending on trips. That included gains of 9.3% for United Airlines, 8% for Delta Air Lines and 7.6% for American Airlines.

The smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 index jumped 3.6%, well above the S&P 500’s gain. Smaller companies’ profits can be more dependent on the strength of the U.S. economy than those for big, multinational rivals.

All told, the S&P 500 jumped 133.90 points to 6,932.30. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 1,206.95 to 50,115.67, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 490.63 to 23,031.21.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe.

That was even though Stellantis, the auto giant whose stock trades in Italy, lost a quarter of its value after saying it would take a charge of 22 billion euros, or $26 billion, as it dials back its electric vehicle production. The automaker acknowledged “over-estimating the pace of the energy transition” and said it was resetting its business “to align the company with the real-world preferences of its customers.”

Stocks fell across much of Asia, but Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.8%. It benefited from a 2% climb for Toyota Motor, which said CEO Koji Sato will step down in April and will be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Kenta Kon.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.20% from 4.21% late Thursday.

___ AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.