Stocks turn positive for the week on Thursday on trade talk optimism. President Trump announced that the U.S. and the UK have made an agreement on trade. Trade representatives from the U.S. and China are also slated to meet this weekend in Switzerland to work out trade terms. The Dow gained 254 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 rose 0.6%, and the Nasdaq advanced 1%.

Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Stryker manufactures and markets medical devices, primarily in the orthopedic market. The Orthopedics segment sells joint reconstructive products (hips, knees, and shoulders) and trauma implants. The MedSurg Equipment segment sells powered surgical instruments, surgical navigation systems, endoscopic products, medical video imaging equipment, and hospital beds and patient-handling systems. The Neurotechnology unit includes the neurovascular business as well as the interventional spine and spinal implants business.

Stryker designs, manufactures, and markets an array of medical equipment, instruments, consumable supplies, and implantable devices. The product portfolio includes hip and knee replacements, extremities, endoscopy systems, operating room equipment, embolic coils, hospital beds and gurneys, and orthopedic robotics. Stryker remains one of the three largest competitors in reconstructive orthopedic implants and holds the leadership position in operating room equipment. Roughly one fourth of Stryker's total revenue currently comes from outside the United States.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the recent period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as AI and vaccines) and services (such as Zoom calls and Netflix), as well as moving into new markets (clean energy, rare drugs), the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. Consider that U.S. GDP was approximately $1 trillion in 1930 but was almost $30 trillion at the end of 2024. That's growth of 30-times. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown less than 3-times during that time span, to 340 million from 120 million. The delta between GDP growth and population growth has been driven, in large part, by innovation.