04:27 PM EDT, 08/23/2024 (MT Newswires) -- US benchmark equity indexes rose Friday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the "time has come" for monetary policy easing.

The Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.5% to 17,877.8, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.2% to 5,634.6. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.1% to 41,175.1. All sectors closed higher, led by real estate's 2% jump.

For the week, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose 1.4% each, while the Dow advanced 1.3%.

"The time has come for policy to adjust," Powell said at the Kansas City Fed-sponsored economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, adding that upside risks to inflation have "diminished."

"The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks," Powell said.

The central bank's Federal Open Market Committee hiked interest rates by 525 basis points from March 2022 through July 2023 to tame inflation, but has since held monetary policy steady, with its latest pause coming late last month.

"While Chair Powell didn't give much in terms of the expected pace of cuts, it didn't seem like an oversized 50-basis-point cut is warranted at this time," TD Securities said in a Friday note to clients.

Separately, Macquarie Group said that upcoming employment data are now expected to hold "particular importance" in determining the policy path ahead. Policymakers are likely to be "sensitive" to any further increase in the unemployment rate, the brokerage said.

The US two-year yield fell 9.5 basis points to 3.92%, while the 10-year rate dropped 6.1 basis points to 3.80%.

In company news, Workday (WDAY) shares jumped nearly 13%, the top gainer on the Nasdaq. Late Thursday, the maker of cloud applications for finance and human resources reported fiscal Q2 results above market estimates and reiterated its full-year subscription revenue outlook.

Warner Bros. Discovery ( WBD ) has started working on expanding original programming for TNT, but the content will not be as expensive as TNT's previous offerings, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. The company's shares rose 7.3%, the second-best performer on the Nasdaq and among the toppers on the S&P 500.

Intuit (INTU) saw the steepest decline on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, down 6.8%. Late Thursday, the financial technology platform issued a fiscal Q1 financial outlook that fell short of Wall Street's estimates at the time.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 2.5% to $74.87 a barrel Friday.

In economic news, new-home sales in the US increased by a double-digit percentage in July even as median prices at the national level increased for the second consecutive month, government data showed.

Gold increased 1.2% to $2,546 per troy ounce, while silver jumped 2.8% to $29.85 per ounce.