S&P 500 hovers near record high, on pace to notch a winning week

The S&P 500 traded near its record high on Friday as Wall Street is set to wrap up the week with solid gains.

The broad equity benchmark was little changed after notching a record closing high in the previous session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 100 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.4%.

Some stocks linked to the recovering economy gained. Carnival Corp rose 1.5% after getting two upgrades on Wall street amid pent-up demand and potential summer restart. General Electric climbed about 2%. JPMorgan added 0.9%. Tech stocks including Apple and Netflix pulled back slightly.

The 10-year Treasury yield ticked slightly higher. Treasury yields had retreated on Thursday from their recent highs with the 10-year Treasury yield hovering around 1.6%.

The major averages are set to end the week higher. The Dow is up nearly 1.6% this week. The S&P 500 has gained more than 1.9% since Monday. The Nasdaq Composite has rallied more than 2.5% heading into Friday.

On the data front, the producer price index, which measures wholesale price inflation, jumped in March. The March PPI data showed a rise of 1.0%, compared with a projected increase of 0.4% from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

Year over year, the PPI surged 4.2%, which marks the largest annual gain in more than nine years.

Investors largely shrugged off an unexpected jump in jobless claims from last week. The Labor Department reported first-time claims for the week ended April 3 totaled 744,000, well above the expectation for 694,000 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called the recovery from the pandemic “uneven” on Thursday, signaling a more robust recovery is needed.

“The recovery remains uneven and incomplete,” Powell said Thursday in a virtual event presented by the International Monetary Fund and moderated by CNBC’s Sara Eisen. “This unevenness that we’re talking about is a very serious issue.”