Wall St Rebounds, Dollar Gains on Solid GDP Data, Upbeat Earnings

U.S. stocks bounced back and the dollar hit a two-month peak on Friday as solid economic data and a spate of positive earnings reports brought buyers back to the market.

A host of upbeat quarterly reports from a broad range of U.S. companies, including Google parent Alphabet Inc, Intel Corp, Starbucks Corp, and McDonald’s Corp helped allay disappointment over Amazon.com’s miss.

U.S. economic growth slowed less than analysts expected in the second quarter as consumer spending surged, more than making up for a drop in imports and inventory build-up.

The GDP report was “slightly better than expected but certainly not enough to change the path of the Fed meeting by the end of this month,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York. “This is just what the market needed, not so soft that the economy is slowing down precipitously and not so strong that the Fed is going to reverse course.”

Investors now look ahead to the coming week, when negotiators arrive in Beijing to resume talks aimed toward resolving the long-running U.S.-China trade war and the Federal Reserve’s policymakers convene, which is expected to culminate in the first interest rate cut in a decade.

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