NEW YORK – Wall Street completed its best week since November, while U.S. stocks rose slightly on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent, marking its seventh consecutive day of gains, and fell to within 2 percent of its all-time high hit last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 96 points, or 0.2 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.2 percent.

US Treasury yields fell in the bond market after some mixed reports on the US economy, one of which showed fewer housing starts than forecast last month, which cooled the market somewhat. Optimism had risen earlier in the week after a spate of better-than-expected reports 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 relatively quiet trading capped a hectic week in which strong economic data helped Wall Street bounce back after a frightening plunge. The S&P 500 briefly fell nearly 10% from its record last week as stocks around the world reeled on a range of concerns. Many of those questions still hang over the market, just not quite as precariously as before.

One concern was the strength of the US economy following a surprisingly weak employment report last month.

While confidence in the strength of the economy has increased following this week’s strong reports, it is still likely to be eroding 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. The Fed did this to ease 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 say, but Wall Street is hoping that an expected rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September will prevent that from happening.

Next week, the markets’ attention will turn to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will give a speech later this week. In the past, this location has been the scene of important political announcements.

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

But Powell could provide clues as to whether the Fed simply wants to take the brakes off the economy with the interest rate cuts or whether it also wants 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 in the index. The index reversed from an initial 1.4% decline to end up up 1.4%.

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. The trigger was 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, H&R Block shares rose 12.1 percent, one of the biggest gains on the market, after the company reported better-than-expected earnings for the last quarter, increased its dividend by 17 percent and announced a share buyback program worth up to $1.5 billion.

Overall, the S&P 500 rose 11.03 points to 5,554.25. The Dow rose 96.70 to 40,659.76 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 37.22 to 17,631.72.

In the bond market, the yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds fell from 3.92% to 3.88%. The yield on 2-year Treasury bonds, which is more in line with expectations regarding Fed action, fell from 4.10% to 4.05%.

On overseas stock markets, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 3.6 percent, recording its best week in more than four years. It was a strong rebound from heavy losses in the previous week, when the Japanese stock market had its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987.