After two straight days of losses, the Dow Jones Industrial Average wrapped up the last day of May with its best session of 2024. The blue-chip index rose by 574.84 points, or 1.51%, to close at 38,686.32 on Friday.
Dow Jones was helped by a surge of health insurer UnitedHealth, which saw its shares go up by 2.8%, and cloud-based software company Salesforce, which stock went up by 7.5%. Elsewhere on the stock market, the S&P 500 saw a gain of 42.03 points, or 0.80%, to close at 5,277.51, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.01% to 16,735.02.
Overall, all three indexes ended the month on a positive note. For Dow Jones, it was the best May since 2020, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq recorded best performances in May since 2003. Furthermore, it marked sixth positive month is the past seven.
Investors’ reaction on Friday was tied to the release of April’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, which the Federal Reserve uses to measure inflation. The index went up 0.3% on a monthly basis and rose 2.7% compared to the same period last year, which was in line with expectations. The core PCE price index, which excludes food and energy, is up 0.2% and had a year-over-year increase of 2.8%, while economists expected 0.2% and 2.7%, respectively.