Stocks Rise, Buoyed by Apple Earnings

Major stock indexes have had a roller coaster week. Despite Friday’s gains, the broad S&P 500 remains on track to fall for the fourth consecutive week as the Federal Reserve has rattled markets by moving to raise interest rates.

Some upbeat big-name corporate earnings reports cheered investors. Shares of

Apple,

AAPL 5.56%

the world’s largest publicly traded company by market capitalization, rallied 5.9% on Friday after the iPhone maker posted record revenue and profits.

Visa

jumped 8.5% after beating analysts’ forecasts for profits and sales.

Among the day’s underperformers,

Chevron

slid 4.1% after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that were lower than expected, even as surging commodity prices lifted the oil producer to its most profitable year since 2014.

Caterpillar

tumbled 6% after the equipment maker reported a surge in costs that offset a jump in revenue.

Shares of

Robinhood Markets

rebounded from a steep loss of more than 10% after the opening bell and were recently up 8.3%. The brokerage popular with small investors reported a larger-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday afternoon.

Stocks have slumped since the beginning of January as the Federal Reserve has moved to raise interest rates to combat surging inflation. Fed Chairman

Jerome Powell’s

comments Wednesday added to expectations that the central bank will start a series of rate increases in March. Low rates during the pandemic helped fuel a huge rally in stocks and other risky assets.

“Cheap money is like a comfort blanket for investors and for markets,” said

Jane Foley,

senior foreign-exchange strategist at Rabobank. “Almost inevitably, you start to withdraw some of that cheap money and you’re going to have more volatility in the markets.”

Government data released Friday showed the upward pressure on prices that has worried policy makers. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the core personal-consumption expenditures price index, rose at 4.9% in December over the prior year. A separate measure showed employers spent 4% more on wages and benefits last year—an increase not seen since 2001—as a tight labor market encouraged workers to demand more pay.

Meanwhile, new Commerce Department data showed consumer spending fell last month amid rising prices and the fallout from the Omicron wave of Covid-19.

Inflation concerns have filtered into this week’s corporate earnings reports.

Mondelez International

said late Thursday that it would likely raise prices further this year. Its shares fell about 3% on Friday after the global food giant said its profitability was being squeezed by rising ingredient and transportation costs.

Jitters over the Fed and inflation have preoccupied investors even as corporate earnings have generally been solid. Almost a third of the companies on the S&P 500 have reported fourth-quarter results, and 78% of them have beaten analysts’ estimates for earnings per share, according to FactSet.

Investors bought government bonds on Friday, pushing down yields. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.789% from 1.807% on Thursday. Bond yields move in the opposite direction from prices.

Write to Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com and Alexander Osipovich at alexander.osipovich@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Government-bond prices fell, pushing up yields. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said falling bond prices pushed up prices. (Corrected on Jan. 28.)