Stocks moved slightly higher Friday as Wall Street looked to end the week on a positive note after a historic inflation report.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 60 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite each added 0.1%.
Dow component Johnson & Johnson saw its shares rise more than 1% following a Wall Street Journal report that the company is splitting in two. Johnson & Johnson is reportedly breaking off its consumer health division into a separate publicly-traded company.
The stock market appears to have withstood the hottest inflation report in 30 years released Wednesday. The major indexes are on track to close the week lower, but are still within striking distance of their recent records.
This week has seen more dramatic action in the bond market, where the inflation data on Wednesday led to a sharp reversal from the recent decline in the 10-year Treasury yield. The bond market was closed Thursday for Veterans Day and the 10-year yield was mostly flat Friday.
Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said that year-over-year comparisons to an abnormal 2020 and rising wages may have dented the reaction to the inflation report.
“Big numbers get big headlines, and yes prices are higher, but you’ve got also wage increases that are just about to the same amount as inflation is. So inflation is definitely real, but the impact isn’t quite as severe as people think,” Frederick said.
The inflation report was the latest complication from economic data that investors have sorted through in recent weeks, with some professional investors looking optimistically toward 2022.
“We’ve probably reached maximum supply chain disruption and I think the labor market is going to free up a bit as we saw with the jobs report last Friday,” said Brent Schutte, the chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual.
