U.S. stocks are falling on Friday as Wall Street heads toward its best week since November.

The S&P 500 lost 0.1 percent in midday trading, potentially ending a six-day winning streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1 point, or less than 0.1 percent, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.1 percent.

US Treasury yields remained relatively stable in the bond market after some mixed reports on the US economy, one of which showed that fewer housing starts were made last month than forecast. This was a small dampener for the market after a spate of better-than-expected reports this week on everything from inflation to US retail sales.

But a report later in the morning suggested that U.S. consumers are feeling better about the economy than expected. That’s a big deal for Wall Street because its spending accounts for the bulk of the economy.

Friday’s relative calm caps a hectic week in which strong data helped lift Wall Street after a frightening run-up. Stocks had been reeling the week before on a number of concerns, and the Japanese market recorded its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987. Many of those questions still hang over the market, if not quite as precariously as before.

One particular concern is the strength of the US economy following last month’s surprisingly weak employment report.

While confidence in the strength of the economy has increased following this week’s reports, it is still likely to flatten under the weight of high interest rates. And that’s intentional. The Federal Reserve’s goal was to cool the overheated labor market by making credit and spending more expensive for businesses and households, thereby reducing upward pressure on inflation, which peaked at over 9% two summers ago.

The question is whether the slowdown in economic growth will overshoot the mark and widen into a recession. That is too early to tell, but Wall Street is hoping that an expected rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September will help prevent that from happening.

Markets will focus on Jackson Hole, Wyoming next week, where Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will speak later this week, and in the past there have been hints of major policy announcements at this event.

Since the Fed has stated that its future steps will depend largely on the data reports released at that time, “it will be difficult for Powell to commit to a specific direction in advance in Jackson Hole,” say Deutsche Bank economists led by Matthew Luzzetti.

However, Powell could provide clues as to whether the Fed’s interest rate cuts are merely intended to take the brakes off the economy or to give it a boost.

A second major market concern is whether investors, in their hype about artificial intelligence, have driven up the prices of Nvidia and other influential stocks of the big technology companies too high.

This debate is not over yet. In just one hour on Friday morning, Nvidia went from being the heaviest weight in the S&P 500 to being the strongest driver of the index. It went from falling 1.4 percent to rising 1.6 percent before settling at a gain of 0.3 percent.

Such fluctuations are typical for the stock that has become the face of the AI ​​hype. After a price increase of over 170 percent in the first six and a half months of the year, Nvidia plummeted by more than 20 percent in the following three weeks.

A third factor that has caused the big swings in global markets is technical. It was triggered by a rate hike by the Bank of Japan, which forced hedge funds around the world to abandon a popular trade en masse, borrowing Japanese yen at cheap rates to invest elsewhere.

The forced and sudden selling that followed hit markets around the world, but calmed down after a senior Bank of Japan official said it would not raise interest rates further while markets were unstable. However, analysts believe there could be further potential selling in the system.

On Wall Street, Advanced Materials experienced one of the biggest declines in the S&P 500, losing 3.1% despite reporting a better-than-expected earnings report.

On the winning side was H&R Block, whose shares rose 17.9 percent after the company reported higher-than-expected earnings for the latest quarter and increased its dividend.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note remained stable at 3.92%, where it was late Thursday. The yield on the two-year note, which is more in line with expectations for Fed action, also remained stable at 4.10%.

On foreign stock markets, the Japanese Nikkei 225 rose by 3.6 percent, recording its best week in more than four years. In the rest of Asia and Europe, the indices also mostly recorded gains.