The S&P 500 closed about 5,000 for the first time as market participants were encouraged by December's revised inflation reading, which came in lower than previously reported. The broader market index rose nearly 0.6% on the day, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 50 points and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 1.3%.
Here's how the market settled to close out the week:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +0.57% or +28.70 points to 5,026.61
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): -0.14% or -54.64 points to 38,671.69
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +1.25% or +196.95 points to 15,990.66
Moving Markets: The Labor Department on Friday said that inflation rose at a slower pace than previously reported in December, increase by 0.2% instead of the original print of 0.3%. Still, core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.3% in December, matching the government's original report. Moreover, November's CPI was revised higher to 0.2% from its initial 0.1% estimate.
While the changes to previous inflation reports were small, December's updated reading confirmed that inflation is continuing to ease, giving more evidence to market optimism that the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates later this year.
On the Earnings Front: Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) shares rose nearly 20% on Friday after the cybersecurity provider reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday. Notably, the company's revenue increased by nearly 32% year-over-year, with Cloudflare signings its largest new customer deal and renewal to date during the quarter, CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement.
"By the end of 2024, we plan to have inference to GPUs deployed in nearly every city that makes up Cloudflare's global network and within milliseconds of nearly every device connected to the Internet worldwide," Prince added.
Pinterest (NYSE: PIN) shares came under pressure on Friday after the media-sharing platform reported mixed fourth-quarter earnings and lackluster forward guidance. However, some of the losses were pared by Pinterest announcing a new partnership with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL). For its current first-quarter, Pinterest expects revenue between $690 million and $705 million, representing annual growth of 15% to 17%.
Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) also posted weaker-than-expected fiscal third-quarter earnings, with its earnings notably declining 17% year-over-year. For its current quarter, the video game giant expects adjusted earnings of $0.05 per share on net bookings of $1.29 billion at the mid-point of its guidance, coming well below analyst forecast for adjusted earnings of $0.94 per share.
PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) on Friday reported mixed fourth-quarter earnings as the beverage and snack giant faced waning demand in North America. Pepsi's organic revenue rose 4.5% during the quarter, boosted in-part by higher prices, but those higher prices also impacted demand, leading to declining volume. Looking ahead, Pepsi expects organic revenue to increase by 4% for full-year 2024, with core constant currency earnings per share to rise at least 8%.
In Single-Stock News: Pinterest announced a new ad deal with Google in effort to boost its ad revenue after its monthly active users rose 11% year-over-year to 498 million.
"This partnership will focus on monetizing several of our currently unmonetized international markets by enabling ads to be served on Pinterest via Google's Ad Manager," said Pinterest CEO Bill Ready during the company's earnings call. "We went live a couple of weeks ago, and this is starting to ramp up. Third-party ad demand is scaling as we anticipated."