The polite term is that stocks are mixed Friday. It means this for now:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is higher, thanks in part to gains for American Express, pushing toward a 4% gain, because its core customers — the affluent — are doing what they do: They’re continuing to spend.
The company’s earnings of $4.14 a share on record revenue of $18.4 billion beat Wall Street estimates for earnings of around $4 on revenue of $18 billion.
So, too, is Visa because customers are using their credit and debit cards like crazy. So, too, is Walmart, which is investing in technology to build up its online business.
Thursday’s most visible losers — Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp — were sharply higher.
The Utah and Arizona banking companies freaked markets on Thursday with disclosures of surprising losses in their loan portfolios and helped set off the day’s pullback.
Shares of Zions, Salt Lake City, were up 5.1% to $49.34. Western Alliance, the Phoenix bank, was up 2.2% to $71.94.
The losers look as if they’re falling because of worries about bubbles. Oracle is down 5.5% to $296 in part because investors seem skeptical of its artificial intelligence growth plans.
Gold (yes, gold) was down $52 to $4,254 per troy ounce. Silver dropped $2.67 to $50.625. Crude oil was up slightly at $57.06 per 52-gallon barrel.
At 10 a.m. ET the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was up a modest six points to 6,636. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up two points to 22,565.
But the Dow is the day’s star, up 177 points to 46,129, thanks to AmEx.
The 10-year Treasury yield, which fell below 4% Thursday, was back above that threshold Friday to 4.012%.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, was off 2.2% to $105,859. It’s down 3.1% this week and off nearly 15% from its August all-time high.
Related: Stocks and Markets Podcast: Weighing in on AI, Trump and tariffs
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Oct 17, 2025, where it first appeared in the Markets section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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