Stocks were headed for further gains on Friday, with investors still feeling optimistic about the health of the U.S. economy thanks to a strong batch of retail sales and jobs data.<\/p>\n
Futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 96 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures rose 0.2% and contracts tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 climbed 0.1%, after both indexes closed at record highs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Figures published Thursday showed retail spending<\/a> rose at a faster-than-expected rate in June, and the number of jobless claims<\/a> for last week came in below economists\u2019 expectations. That has helped shore up confidence in the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n The data \u201creassured investors that the consumer was still resilient,\u201d Deutsche Bank macro strategist Jim Reid said. \u201cSo collectively there is a growing sense of the U.S. economy continuing to run hot, despite there being less than two weeks now until the Aug. 1 tariff deadline<\/a>,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The second-quarter earnings season is also off to a solid-enough start, with video streamer Netflix topping Wall Street\u2019s expectations for profit and revenue after Thursday\u2019s close. Post-it Notes maker 3M and credit card provider American Express are among the companies set to report on Friday.<\/p>\n The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note slipped 1 basis point to 4.44% in early trading. The U.S. dollar fell 0.3% against a weighted basket of its peers, and gold prices were up 0.2% to $3,352 per Troy ounce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stocks were headed for further gains on Friday, with investors still feeling optimistic about the health of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[28,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-18454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-markets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}