Wall Street clocks another winning week

U.S. stocks closed higher Friday, capping a choppy week of trading with the market’s third winning week in the last four and another milestone.

The S&P 500 rose 0.8%, finishing just shy of the record it set last week. The benchmark index also wiped out its losses from a slide last week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite added 1% to the all-time high it set a day earlier.

Technology companies, with their hefty stock values, did much of the heavy lifting for the market. Nvidia rose 1.1% and Apple gained 4.2%.

Gilead Sciences jumped 8.3% for one of the market's biggest gains. It reported financial results that easily beat analysts' forecasts, while also raising its earnings forecast for the year. Expedia Group rose 4.1% after also reporting encouraging financial results.

They are among the final big batch of companies within the S&P 500 to report mostly strong financial results for the second quarter. Still, many have warned that current tariffs could cut into their profits.

Financial sector stocks also helped drive the market higher. Bank of America gained 2.4% and Mastercard rose 2.3%.

Elsewhere in the market, entertainment giant Paramount Skydance slid 10.5% a day after the company was created by the closing of an $8 billion merger of Skydance and Paramount. Shares in rival Warner Bros. Discovery sank 8%.

The main focus throughout the week has been on President Donald Trump’s trade war and its potential impact on the U.S. economy, as well as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy. Trump began imposing higher import taxes on dozens of countries Thursday.

Still, the market appeared to largely shrug off the latest tariff escalation.

“The S&P 500’s rebound this week may highlight the extent to which the market is becoming numb to tariff headlines,” said Daniel Skelly, head of Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Management Market Research & Strategy Team.

The unknown path of the economy amid an unpredictable tariff policy has been the key reason for the Fed to hold its benchmark interest rate steady.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though, has been under increasing pressure from Trump to cut interest rates. Policy decisions aren’t made solely by the Fed chair. All 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee vote on interest rate changes.

Trump has an opportunity to exert more control over the Fed following his nomination of Stephen Miran to a vacancy on the Fed’s board of governors. Miran is a top economic adviser to Trump and is a near-certain vote in support of lower interest rates.

The Fed’s last decision to hold interest rates steady included two votes to lower interest rates. Its next meeting is in September, and Wall Street is overwhelmingly betting that the central bank will cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.

Treasury yields edged higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.28% from 4.25% late Thursday. The yield on the two-year Treasury which more closely tracks expectations for Fed actions, rose to 3.76% from 3.73% late Thursday.

The expectation for an interest rate cut follows a series of signals last week that the economy could be weakening. That included reports showing that inflation edged higher in June and employers in the U.S. hit the brakes on hiring in July.

Both are key concerns for the Fed, which has been trying to cool inflation down to its target rate of 2% while also fulfilling its “full employment” mandate.

Lower interest rates can give the economy and investment prices a boost, though the downside is that they can also push inflation higher. Concerns about inflation reheating could be overshadowed by worries about a weakening employment market.

Wall Street and the Fed will get more insight next week on inflation's temperature and the economy. The government will release updates on inflation at both the consumer and wholesale levels, along with a report on retail sales.

“We believe stocks will stay supported amid solid fundamentals, but fresh headlines in the coming week may challenge investor sentiment that remains vulnerable to tariff, economic, and geopolitical risks,” said Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer for the Americas and global head of equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 49.45 points to 6,389.45. The Dow rose 206.97 points to 44,175.61, and the Nasdaq rose 207.32 points to finish at 21,450.02.

Asian markets closed mostly lower except in Tokyo, where the Nikkei rose 1.9% after Japan’s main trade envoy said the U.S. had agreed to correct a problem over tariffs that will apply to exports to the U.S.

European markets were mixed.

A screen shows stock prices on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Dave Ramsden, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking of The Bank of England, attends the financial stability report press conference at the Bank of England, London, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. (Jordan Pettitt/Pool Photo via AP)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.

It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"

In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).

It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”

Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.

“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.

Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”

Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.

Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.

Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.

Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.

Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.

"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”

While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.

“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."

The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”

Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.

“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”

A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”

Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.

The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.

Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.

The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)