Home Depot climbs as most of Wall Street remains stuck in a summer lull

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is holding steady on Tuesday, stuck in a summer lull.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, a day after barely budging, and remains near its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 68 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.4%.

Home Depot rose 3.1% to lead the Dow higher after reporting results for the latest quarter that were a bit short of what analysts expected.

The retailer said homeowners have been focused on smaller, less expensive home repairs while putting off bigger projects because of high interest rates and continuing concerns about inflation. But it stood by its prior forecast for revenue and profit over the full year.

Other big retailers will deliver their latest profit updates in coming days. Lowe’s and Target are on deck for Wednesday, while Walmart and Ross Stores will report on Thursday.

The week’s likely headliner, though, will not arrive until Friday, which could keep trading on Wall Street relatively quiet until then. That’s when the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give a highly anticipated speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Powell may give a hint that cuts to interest rates are coming soon.

The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate steady this year, primarily because of the fear of the possibility that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. But a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country and worries about the U.S. economy may be superseding that.

Traders on Wall Street widely expect the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September. Treasury yields have come down notably in the bond market as a result, and they remained lower on Tuesday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.31% from 4.34% late Monday.

Strategists at Bank of America, though, warn that Powell may not sound as inclined to cut interest rates as the market is expecting. He could remain non-committal and discuss the possibility of a worst-case scenario for the economy called “stagflation.” The Fed has no good tool to fix that situation, where the economy stagnates at the same time as inflation remains high.

On Wall Street, Palo Alto Networks climbed 6.5% after reporting profit and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations. The cybersecurity company also gave forecasts for profit and revenue in its upcoming fiscal year that were above Wall Street’s.

Tegna rose 4.8% after Nexstar Media Group said it will buy the owner of 64 television stations across the country for $22 per share in cash, giving the deal a total value of $6.2 billion, including debt. Nexstar, which owns the CW and local television broadcasters of its own, added 7.2%.

The companies said combining will give them a broader reach and allow them to better compete with Big Tech and legacy media.

Viking Therapeutics tumbled 39.7% after the biopharmaceutical company released results from a clinical trial of its oral tablet, which could treat obesity and other metabolic disorders.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe after falling modestly in Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.4% as market heavyweight SoftBank Group Corp. fell 4% after it announced it was taking a $2 billion stake in U.S. chip maker Intel.

Intel, which has been climbing recently on reports that the Trump administration may take an ownership stake in the company, climbed 7.5%.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.