US stocks end moderately higher

Investors overcame their concerns about inflation and mounting trade deficits to push stocks moderately higher today, but the major indexes ended the week mixed as nervousness mounted over the Federal Reserve’s pending decision on interest rates.

America’s current account deficit, the broadest measure of U.S. trade, reached an all-time high in the first quarter of 2004, but there was little apparent worry that consumers’ appetite for foreign goods could cause prices to spike higher – an inflationary trigger that could prompt the Fed to abandon its promise of a measured hike in interest rates.