LIVE: Wall Street surges to its best week since April as Bitcoin slides under $65,000

Wall Street finished Friday higher after the surprise decline in July employment gave traders another reason to expect the Federal Reserve to sit tight on rates for now.

The S&P 500 gained 0.62% to a record 7,757.64, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.3% to 26,690.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 151.83 points, or 0.28%, to 54,036.93.

That capped a second straight winning week for stocks. After crossing 7,700 for the first time earlier in the week, the S&P 500 finished the five-day stretch up 3.6%.

The Nasdaq gained 5.2%, helped by a recovery in chipmakers, while the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) rose more than 7%. The Dow added almost 3%. All three major indexes logged their strongest weeks since April.

Over in currencies, the yen has started giving back the surge triggered by last week’s joint US-Japan intervention.

The operation announced on July 31, involving the US Treasury and Bank of Japan, initially drove the dollar down from a little above ¥163 to roughly ¥155. A week later, the exchange rate had climbed back toward ¥158.50 per dollar, meaning the yen had surrendered close to half of its initial advance.

The dollar itself had been hovering near a three-week low against other major currencies on Thursday, with traders also watching negotiations over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Ebury Head of Market Strategy Matthew Ryan told Cryptopolitan that Trump keeps signaling that an agreement is close, although markets remained cautious about taking that timeline for granted. Matthew said the biggest unresolved issue was whether Iran would agree to give up control over traffic moving through the Strait.

He added that a longer delay could eventually bring buyers back into the dollar, although traders were still maintaining a relatively upbeat stance for now.

Before Friday’s employment numbers arrived, Matthew said investors were also heavily focused on the July payrolls release because expectations for the Fed’s September meeting were almost evenly divided.

Economists had been looking for roughly 80,000 new jobs and no change in unemployment. Matthew said:

“While we think that this would be solid enough to confirm that the jobs market remains in a ‘low hire, low fire’ state, we do not think that it would be enough to validate the hawkish dissenters at the July FOMC meeting. Instead, a print in that range would likely reinforce the case for patience, shifting the market’s focus onto developments in the Iran conflict and the upcoming CPI prints.”

SpaceX shares jumped 12% on Friday, extending what has turned into the company’s strongest weekly showing in some time. The stock was up almost 19% for the week, putting it on track to finally finish a week higher after closing in the red for four straight weeks.

Part of that rebound came after Argus upgraded Space Exploration Technologies from hold to buy. The firm kept its $160 price target, which would represent roughly 39% upside from Thursday’s closing level.

The shares had already seen their price fall during the week due to fear of possible selling pressure once a number of unlock dates for shares was nearing. By Friday, the fears were already priced in and the shares rallied strongly rather than continuing their descent.

Nvidia was also having a strong week. The chipmaker had gained more than 10% since Monday and was up over 1% during Friday trading.

The latest boost followed comments from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who said Nvidia would be the company’s exclusive partner as SpaceX expands its artificial intelligence infrastructure.

During SpaceX’s first earnings call since becoming a public company on Aug. 4, Elon said the decision came down to Nvidia’s latest hardware. “We’ve decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture,” he said.

Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform pairs CPUs that handle data movement and coordinate workloads with GPUs designed to process query-and-response tasks.

Bitcoin abruptly surged past $65,000 on Friday moments before US jobs data was released, though still basically flat for the week.

TradingView data showed Ether at $1,903, while other major cryptocurrencies were mostly within a percentage point or two of where they started.

Then the jobs report landed, and it was much weaker than expected. US nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, completely missing the 83,000 increase economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected.

The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, rather than staying at the anticipated 4.2%, but that came as the labor force participation rate sank to its lowest level in more than five years.

Stock futures liked the numbers. Traders took the weak employment print as another reason for the Federal Reserve to leave interest rates alone at its September meeting.

Nasdaq 100 futures jumped 1.2%, S&P 500 futures gained 0.5%, and Dow futures climbed 160 points, or 0.3%. CME FedWatch pricing also showed most fed funds futures traders expecting the Fed to keep its benchmark rate at 3.50% to 3.75% next month.

The bounce comes after a rough Thursday on Wall Street. Higher oil prices had dragged on equities, leaving the Dow down more than 460 points, or 0.9%, and ending its five-session winning streak. The S&P 500 lost 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.1%.

Oil went the other way Friday. September WTI futures fell 0.6% to $76.85 a barrel, while Brent crude dropped 0.7% to $81.90.

Precious metals were having a much stronger day. Gold rose another 1% to around $4,300 an ounce, while silver broke above $64 an ounce after climbing more than 4% over the past 24 hours.