Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stocks surged on Friday as technology stocks recovered following several days of heavy selling in the sector and bitcoin rebounded following a rout that took the popular cryptocurrency down more than 50% at one point.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 1,184 points, or 2.4%, exceeding the 50,000 level for the first time ever and turning positive for the week. The S&P 500 jumped 1.9%, while the Nasdaq Composite traded up 2.2%. With those moves, the S&P 500 climbed back into the green for 2026.
Even with Friday’s pop, the S&P 500 was still on pace for a 0.1% decline for the week, while the Nasdaq is down almost 2% on the week. The 30-stock Dow, meanwhile, is sitting up 2.5% week to date, benefitting from some rotation into some economically cyclical stocks even as the overall market was weighed down by tech selling.
Dow Jones Industrial average, 5 days
Nvidia and Broadcom were two of the key winners Friday, with the former increasing by 8% and the latter growing 7% following big declines earlier in the week. Other stocks such as Oracle and Palantir Technologies also bounced back as investors reconsidered some of the names at cheaper levels. Oracle and Palantir each rose 4%. Some key software stocks like ServiceNow — which has been the epicenter of the tech sell-off because of an artificial intelligence disruption fear of software — remained weak on Friday, however.
“We’re in a gold rush right now with AI,” said Falcon Wealth Planning founder Gabriel Shahin.
“You have the investment that Google is making, Nvidia is making, that Meta is making, that Amazon is making. There is money that will be deployed,” he also said. “It’s just the carousel (of money movement) sometimes scares people.”
Shahin believes the market is in the midst of a “great recalibration,” where investors are going to move further out of growth stocks and into value. Over the coming months, his bet is on large-cap value names. That played out Friday, with investors buying up shares in areas such as industrials and financials. In those sectors, Caterpillar and Goldman Sachs were standouts, supporting the Dow’s outperformance with their rise of 7% and 4%, respectively. Small-cap stocks also saw a boost, with the Russell 2000 index rallying 3%.
Bitcoin recouped some losses Friday, adding 10% to reach back above $70,000 after briefly sinking below $61,000 overnight to its lowest level since October 2024 — more than 52% off from its record high of $126,000 hit in early October 2025. Friday’s move higher helped ease some of the risk-off concerns among investors that recently plagued the broader market. The cryptocurrency has lost 16% this week, however.
The week was bleak heading into Friday, with the S&P 500 on pace for its worst week since last October and the Nasdaq Composite on track for its worst week since the tariff-related market plunge of last April. Friday’s pop pared those declines significantly.
Amazon was an outlier Friday, as shares sank 6% after the e-commerce giant posted earnings per share slightly under analyst expectations and told investors to expect $200 billion in capital expenditures this year.
