Katherine Sullivan

The UK lender agreed to buy wealth manager Evelyn Partners for nearly $4 billion.

Heads up, an artificial intelligence tool helped us make this episode by creating summaries that were based on WSJ reporting and then reviewed and adapted by an editor.

We'll have a lot more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast.

You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's your Closing Bell Brief for Friday, February 6th.

I'm Katherine Sullivan for The Wall Street Journal.

U.S.

stocks surged today as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 50,000-point milestone for the first time.

The index's 2.5% rally was fueled by a resilient economy and healthy corporate earnings.

The Nasdaq rose 2.2 percent as tech shares bounced back from a recent slump, and the S&P 500 rose 2 percent.

Positive consumer sentiment and moderating inflation expectations helped support the broad market gains.

Among individual companies, Nvidia shares climbed nearly 8 percent as investors returned to the technology sector.

Strategy shares surged 26% as the price of Bitcoin rebounded from recent losses.

Other cryptocurrency platform shares also rose.

Stellantis shares plunged 25 percent following news the automaker will take a $26 billion charge as it scales back its electric vehicle business.

And Molina Healthcare shares sank 25.5 percent after the insurer forecast a sharp drop in upcoming profit.

Heads up, an artificial intelligence tool helped us make this episode by creating summaries that were based on WSJ reporting and then reviewed and adapted by an editor.

We'll have a lot more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast.

You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's your Closing Bell Brief for Wednesday, February 4th.