Wall Street is coasting toward the finish of its best week in the last five as U.S. stocks hang near their record levels.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading Friday after setting an all-time high for the third straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.1%.
Stocks have rallied with expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at its meeting next week. RH dropped after the furniture retailer said tariffs and a weak housing market are forcing it to cut its forecasts
Wall Street on Thursday was boosted by a rally in shares of Tesla and Micron Technology, while a monthly inflation report kept the U.S. central bank on track to cut rates next week.
Markets were already pricing in a 25 basis point easing in monetary policy after a series of recent indicators had shown that the labor market was worse than previously thought.
The bleak August nonfarm payrolls, however, brought up bets on a bigger 50-bps cut, that currently stand at 7.5%, CME's FedWatch tool showed.
Post the inflation data, pricing showed three quarter-point cuts, one at every Fed meeting left this year.
A preliminary reading of the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey is due on Friday.
The three main indexes are set to log gains for the second week of September, largely helped by a revival in artificial intelligence trade after cloud computing giant Oracle's upbeat forecast on Tuesday.
It sparked a rally in AI-linked semiconductors and utilities companies powering data centers earlier in the week, setting up the S&P 500 information technology sector to outperform peers this week.
The indexes are in the positive territory for September so far - a month that is deemed bad for U.S. equities historically, where the benchmark S&P 500 has shed 1.5% on average since 2000, data compiled by LSEG showed.
Among stocks, Warner Bros Discovery was 4% higher in premarket trading, extending Wednesday's over 28% gains, as a source said Paramount Skydance was preparing a bid for the Hollywood studio.
Photoshop-maker Adobe gained 4.2% after raising its annual profit and revenue forecasts.
Microsoft inched up 1.6% after it reached a non-binding deal with OpenAI to allow it to restructure itself into a for-profit company.