Wall Street heads for its longest weekly winning streak of the year

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are hanging around their records Friday after Netflix jumped and CVS Health slid amid mixed reports on profits.

The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in afternoon trading and is lingering close to its all-time high set early this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2 points, or less than 0.1%, a day after setting its own record, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher, as of 12:21 p.m. Eastern time.

Netflix jumped 10.1% after the streaming giant reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. That was despite a slowdown in subscriber growth.

It helped offset an 9.2% drop for CVS Health, which said it’s likely to report a profit for the latest quarter that’s well below what analysts had been expecting. The company also said David Joyner, an executive vice president, is taking over as president and CEO for Karen Lynch.

Trading overall on Wall Street remained relatively calm, as the S&P 500 heads toward the close of a sixth straight winning week, which would be its longest such streak of the year.

Solid economic data has boosted hopes the U.S. economy can make a perfect escape from the worst inflation in generations, one that ends without a painful recession that many investors had seen as nearly inevitable. And with the Federal Reserve now cutting interest rates to keep the economy humming, the expectation among optimists is that stocks can rise even further.

But critics are warning that stock prices look too expensive given how much faster they’ve climbed than corporate profits.

David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management, sees both sides. But he says that while stock prices are indeed high relative to profits, they're "reasonable" when considering the Fed is cutting interest rates and other factors. He's also expecting growth in corporate profits to continue, and he raised his forecast for where the S&P 500 could be in June to 6,300 from 6,200.

On Wall Street, American Express fell 3% despite reporting better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell short of forecasts, and it said its revenue for the full year of 2024 will likely come in at the lower end of the forecasted range it gave at the start of the year.

The credit-card company's drop was the biggest reason the Dow dragged behind other stock indexes.

SLB, the giant that helps companies extract oil and natural gas, fell 2.9% after delivering a mixed earnings report. Its profit edged past analysts’ expectations, but its revenue fell short as lower crude prices pushed some international producers to be cautious with their spending. CEO Olivier Le Peuch said revenue grew in the Middle East and Asia, along with offshore North America, but declined in Latin America.

Oil prices have tumbled this week as worries receded that Israel will attack Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation for Iran’s missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude, and a strike could upend its exports to China and elsewhere. Concerns about the strength of demand from China have also hit oil prices.

A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell another 1.5% Friday and was heading for an 7% decline for the week. It’s back below $74 after topping $80 early last week.

On the winning side of Wall Street was Intuitive Surgical, which climbed 8.4% after reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. The company, whose robotic-assisted systems allow for less invasive surgery, also delivered better revenue than expected.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.07% from 4.10% late Thursday.

Traders are coalescing around the idea that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting in November. Expectations had been high earlier for the Fed to deliver another larger-than-usual cut of half a percentage point, but strong updates on the economy have eliminated those. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 4.75% to 5%.

In stock markets abroad, Chinese indexes jumped in their latest sharp swing. Stocks rose 2.9% in Shanghai and 3.6% in Hong Kong after a report showed growth slowed during the summer for the world’s second-largest economy.

The slowdown, exacerbated by a weak real-estate market, has raised expectations for big stimulus from the Chinese government and central bank, though doubts are still prevalent about how much effect they will have.

Stock indexes were mixed elsewhere in Asia and Europe.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.