us stocks climbed for a fifth day on friday but pared early gains after rising to fresh 15month highs as the latest consumer sentiment survey from the university of michigan showed inflation expectations ticked higher in july the dow gained 4771 points or 01 to finish at 3439514 on thursday while the nasdaq composite gained 21961 points or 16 ending at 1413857 the sp 500 gained 3788 points or 09 to end at 451004 finishing above 4500 for the first time since april 5 2022 the university of michigans gauge of consumer sentiment showed americans confidence in the economy boomed last month but a gauge of inflation expectations ticked higher to 34 in july up from 33 in the prior month which caught the markets attention see us consumer sentiment soars in july to highest level since september 2021 while the confidence number moved up markedly i think that the inflation expectations piece of the puzzle didnt move down as much as we thought it would said art hogan chief market strategist at briley wealth however the postdata pullback wasnt enough to turn the main indexes red even as some of friday mornings bigbank stocks briefly erased their gains some of the largest us banks along with assetmanagement giant blackrock inc blk released their results for the quarter ended in june on friday adding to other optimistic reports from major us companies released earlier this week jpmorgan chase  cojpm wells fargo  cowfc and citigroup inc c shares rose after the banks reported earnings and revenue that beat forecasts investors have been eager to hear what those financial giants had to say after a quarter marked by bank failures and interestrate hikes by the federal reserve investors also cheered numbers from dow component unitedhealth group inc unh which emerged as the bestperformer on the dow as it roared higher friday marks the close of what has been an eventful week for markets the big story was the sp 500 indexs first break above the key 4500 level since april 2022 the sp 500 is on track to rise 26 this week per factset that would be its biggest weekly percentagepoint gain since the week ended march 31 although the index rose just shy of 26 during the week ended june 16 the nasdaq meanwhile is on track to rise 38 this week what would be its best performance since the week ended march 17 when it rose 44 the move was fueled by betterthanexpected news on inflation including wednesdays consumerprice index and thursdays producerprice index which both showed the pace of price growth ebbing more quickly than economists had expected strong earnings from pepsi copep delta air linesdal and now a handful of the biggest banks have added to the positive tone weve had a week where most of our news flow and inputs have come in better than expected whether you look at cpi ppi or the first earnings from delta and pepsi hogan said during a phone interview with marketwatch thats continuing today with earnings from the big banks which have either matched estimates or beat estimates taken together earnings released so far this week showed that the us consumer remains in strong shape defying expectations that rising inflation and the spending of savings accumulated during the pandemic would diminish their buying power the consumer may be not quite as strong but certainly the longer term prospects are better than expected said jj kinahan chief executive of ig north america and president of the firms brokerage tastytrade many people thought we would see the consumer falter significantly due to stubborn inflation but thats not whats happening at all investors also digested a report on import prices which showed that prices fell again in june dropping 02 import prices have fallen every month of 2023 except for april  another sign that price pressures in the us have abated bond yields were slightly higher on friday a day after falling for most of the week the benchmark 10year treasury yield  which started the week near 41 moved to 379 levels that havent been seen since late june the ice us dollar index  a gauge of the currencys value against its main rivals slipped further into territory it hasnt seen in more than a year trading at 9977 friday after the buck clinched its longest losing streak since 2021 on thursday investors were also paying close attention to remarks from federal reserve board gov christopher waller who said thursday he was not swayed by junes benign consumer inflation data and that he wants the central bank to go ahead with two more 25basispoint rate hikes this year this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal