Dow crosses 50,000 mark, leading S&P 500, Nasdaq higher as Wall Street rebounds from rout

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) surged more than 2.2% on Friday to touch a fresh intraday record and surpass 50,000 for the first time.

The record comes on the heels of a volatile week as investors rotated away from tech and into defensive and cyclical sectors.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 1.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added about 1.9% with the indexes bouncing back from sharp closing losses.

Fiber company Corning (GLW), storage provider Western Digital (WDC), and networking hardware and telecomm equipment maker Cisco (CSCO) are just a few examples of companies whose stocks have ripped back to highs unseen since their dot-com era booms.

Corning is up more than 125% over the past year, while Western Digital and Cisco have soared 478% and a more modest 35%, respectively. The three were dot-com era stars that lost much of their value during the bubble’s burst and failed to fully recover until the AI boom, as the massive data center build-out by cloud giants has fueled demand for their products.

Corning (GLW), for example, recently announced a deal with Meta (META) worth up to $6 billion as tech giants rush to secure fiber that connects data centers to one another and their enterprise clients.

Corning’s boost has extended to its customer Lumen (LUMN), too — a telecomm infrastructure company that acquired Qwest. Communications and indirectly absorbed Global Crossing, two internet era players that struggled or failed after the dot-com bust. Lumen shares climbed 26% Friday to recover from a weeklong drop, and the stock is up 57% over the last year.

Lumen said this week it has $13 billion worth of fiber deals in the pipeline as AI boosts demand.

” Two years ago, the company was in serious financial trouble,” CFO Chris Stansbury told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview. ” The balance sheet’s now really strong,” partly thanks to a growing boost by AI data centers’ “insatiable demand” for fiber.

Yahoo Finance’s Jen Schonberger reports:

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Wall Street was rebounding in a big way from a weeklong tech-fueled rout, with the Dow (^DJI) up over 1,000 points in midday trading to within striking distance of the 50,000 mark.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) were both up nearly 2%.

Caterpillar (CAT) was the Dow component leading the charge — you can read more on that company below from my colleague, Grace O’Donnell.

Elsewhere, tech names that have been crushed all week were shining. Nvidia (NVDA) soared over 7%. Tesla (TSLA) was up nearly 4%. Microsoft (MSFT) rose close to 2%. The big exception was Amazon (AMZN), whose shares sank over 6% — which did represent a rebound from an earlier 10%-plus decline.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré writes:

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Nvidia (NVDA) stock spiked 4.6% in Friday morning trading as the chipmaker was set to benefit from the more than $600 billion in capital expenditures planned by the four Big Tech hyperscalers: Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta (META).

Amazon said on Thursday that it will spend around $200 billion in 2026.

On Wednesday, Alphabet said its capex would fall between $175 billion and $185 billion.

The previous week, Meta forecast it would spend anywhere from $115 billion to $135 billion. Microsoft hasn’t shared its full-year spending outlook, but if it continues to spend at the same rate as the first half of its fiscal year 2026 — which began in July of 2025 — the Azure cloud provider would see about $145 billion in capex.

At the low end of that range, the four would spend about $635 billion this year, marking a roughly 67% spike from the companies’ $381 billion expenditures in 2025. At the high end of their guidance, the group would spend around $665 billion, or a 74% jump from the previous year.

” It’s all going to Nvidia,” DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Friday morning of the capex figures.

He said that while Nvidia shares have come down about 4% over the past three months — as have fellow AI chip designers Broadcom (AVGO) and AMD (AMD), which dropped about 9% and 14% in that time frame, respectively — investors will likely start once again “giving credit to the companies that are capturing all the profits” from Big Tech’s AI investments.

US stocks rose early Friday in a sign of cautious optimism for rebound after a week-long tech rout.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added roughly 0.2%, recovering from early premarket declines. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) also climbed 0.8% after sharp losses for stocks on Thursday.

Molina Healthcare (MOH) stock fell 28% before the bell on Friday after forecasting 2026 profit below analysts’ expectations. The US health insurer said medical costs have risen across its government-backed plans.

Doximity (DOCS) stock sank 30% during premarket hours today after lowering its full-year sales outlook.

Coty (COTY) stock slumped 13% before the bell on Friday. The beauty brand withdraw its fiscal year guidance on Friday.

Reddit (RDDT) stock jumped 7% before the bell on Friday after posting better-than-expected fourth quarter results and issuing positive guidance, helped by AI tools to bring more marketers to the platform.

Investing.com reports:

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Reuters reports:

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