Stocks soared higher on Friday as investors cheered remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that signaled the central bank may cut interest rates in September.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA) jumped over 800 points to a fresh intraday and closing highs on Friday, settling at 45,631.74, while the broader market S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY) climbed over 1.5% to end at 6,466.91. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQ: QQQ) also advanced over 1.8% to close at 21,496.53, with gains driven by surges from mega-cap stocks including Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Moving markets, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during his highly anticipated speech at the central bank's Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming on Friday that "the balance of risks appear to be shifting" in regards to policymakers' goals of stable prices and a strong labor market due to "sweeping changes" in U.S. tax, trade and immigration policies.
As a result, Powell suggested that "with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance."
Powell's speech brought expectations of a quarter-point rate cut, bringing the federal funds range between 4.00% and 4.25%, to a more than 90% chance at the central bank's next policy meeting in September, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool. Prior to Powell's remarks, market participants were predicting a roughly 70% chance as Wall Street was discouraged in recent sessions by concerns of sticky inflation and lofty valuations for tech stocks.
In the news, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) shares jumped on Friday after a Bloomberg report said the Trump administration is set to announced it will take an equity stake in the chipmaker. Following the report, President Donald Trump said the United States should own about 10% of the company, telling White House reporters: "They've agreed to do it and I think it's a great deal for them."
Earlier this week, Intel announced SoftBank would make a $2 billion investment into the company, equal to about 2% of its market capitalization.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google also made headlines on Friday after a seperate Bloomberg report said the iPhone maker was exploring using Google's artificial intelligence assistant Gemini to power its next version of Siri. Google has started training a model to operate on Apple's servers, according to people familiar with the matter. Earlier this year, Apple reportedly met with Anthropic and OpenAI for a similar partnership.
On the earnings front, Zoom Communications (NASDAQ: ZM) shares rose on Friday after the video-conferencing platform raised its annual revenue and profit outlooks as hybrid office trends and artificial intelligence boosted its projections.
"AI is transforming the way we work together, and Zoom is at the forefront, driving innovation that helps people get more done, reduce costs, and deliver better experiences for customers and employees alike," said CEO Eric S. Yuan in a release. "We delivered an across-the-board strong Q2 marked by achieving our highest year-over-year revenue growth in 11 quarters and expanding GAAP operating margin year over year by 9 percentage points. With our robust performance, we are happy to raise our full year outlook for revenue, non-GAAP operating income, as well as free cash flow, which we now expect to be in the range of $1.74 billion to $1.78 billion."
The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue between $4.83 billion and $4.84 billion, above its earlier guidance of $4.80 billion to $4.81 billion. It's annual adjust profit per share outlook was also boosted to a new range of $5.81 to $5.84 from the previous $5.56 and $5.59.