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US stocks rose on Friday as Amazon's strong earnings and chipmaker gains lifted sentiment. Higher oil prices, climbing bond yields and Apple's drop kept inflation worries in focus.
Newyork,UPDATED: Jul 31, 2026 19:46 IST
US stock markets moved higher on Friday, led by Amazon and computer chipmakers, even as rising oil prices and inflation worries weighed on the bond market. The S&P 500 was up 0.7 per cent in a week that could become its first winning one in the last three, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 179 points, or 0.3 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1.3 per cent as of 9:35 am Eastern time.
Technology stocks led the gains after Amazon reported a much stronger quarterly profit than analysts had expected. At the same time, higher crude prices added to inflation concerns, pushing bond yields higher and increasing pressure on the broader market.
Amazon jumped 13.8 per cent after its profit more than tripled from a year earlier, helped partly by faster growth in its cloud computing business. Analysts said this could show that Amazon's heavy investments in artificial intelligence are starting to pay off. The company also raised its forecast for investment spending this year. The market reaction was similar to Microsoft's a day earlier, when its stock posted its best day in nearly 18 years on signs that its AI investments may also be lifting profits.
Wall Street had been growing concerned that companies spending billions of dollars on AI data centres may not get enough profit and productivity to justify those investments. That had put the broader US market on course for a losing July, along with worries that stock prices had risen too far for companies selling processors and computer memory to the large technology firms, or "hyperscalers", buying them. Those chipmakers rose again on Friday after gains on Thursday. Micron Technology climbed 5.9 per cent and Advanced Micro Devices gained 6 per cent, making them among the biggest contributors to the S&P 500 after Amazon.
The moves were even sharper in South Korea, where AI-linked swings have been among the strongest in the world this year. Seoul's Kospi index surged 17.9 per cent for its best day on record. The index is dominated by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and both stocks jumped at least 26.8 per cent. Even so, the Kospi still fell 22 per cent in July after more than doubling in the first six months of the year.
On the weaker side of Wall Street, Apple dropped 9.1 per cent despite reporting stronger quarterly profit than expected. Analysts said the stock has increasingly become an "anti AI" bet among Big Tech companies because it is spending less on the technology than its rivals. In the oil market, prices moved higher as uncertainty continued over when oil could flow freely from Middle East producers to customers around the world because of the war with Iran. Brent crude rose 2.1 per cent to USD 88.68 a barrel.
Higher oil prices added to inflation pressure and pushed bond yields further up. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.72 per cent from 4.68 per cent late Thursday and from 3.97 per cent before the war with Iran drove oil prices sharply higher. Its rise has already taken the average long-term US mortgage rate to its highest level in a year. Overall, Friday's trading was marked by strong gains in Amazon and chip stocks, a sharp fall in Apple, and continued concern over oil prices and inflation.
With PTI Inputs
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Published By:
India Today Web Desk
Published On:
Jul 31, 2026 19:46 IST
