Stocks rally on Wall Street, still suffer sixth weekly loss

NEW YORK – Wall Street closed out another volatile week of trading with a broad rally Friday, though it wasn’t nearly enough to keep the market from its sixth straight weekly drop, the longest such streak since 2011.

The S&P 500 climbed 2.4%. More than 90% of the companies in the benchmark index closed higher.

The Nasdaq rose 3.8% as more gains in technology companies helped lift the tech-heavy index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.5%.

The upbeat finish still left the indexes with weekly losses of more than 2.4% each, extending the string of weekly declines to six weeks for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, while the Dow registered its seventh straight weekly drop.

Markets have been slumping since late March as traders worry that the Federal Reserve may not succeed in its delicate mission of slowing the economy enough to rein in the highest inflation in four decades without causing a recession.

While there have been sudden rallies along the way, including a 2.5% gain for the S&P 500 in late April and a 3% gain in early May, the market has continued to lose ground since setting an all-time high at the start of the year.

That’s not an unusual pattern on Wall Street when indexes are close to entering a bear market, or a decline of 20% or more from their most recent peak.