Stock market today: S&P 500 jumps to best day in 5 months as tech rebounds, rate cuts come into view
The S&P 500 jumped 1.6% for its best day since February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 99 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite soared 2.6%.
The widespread gains came as
“We think that the time is approaching,” Powell said. “And if we do get the data that we hope we get, then a reduction in our policy rate could be on the table at the September meeting.”
After the Fed voted to keep interest rates steady on Wednesday, as was widely expected, Powell spent much of an ensuing press conference discussing the risks of both moving too early or too late with rate cuts. One could allow inflation to reaccelerate, while the other could cause unnecessary pain for the economy and ultimately throw Americans out of their jobs.
After keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high for roughly a year, speculation may rise that the Fed waited too long. That “has the potential to add to the stock market’s choppiness as we head toward what is historically its most volatile period,” said
For Wednesday, though, the dominant mood on
Advanced Micro Devices rallied 4.4% after reporting better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, thanks in part to accelerating artificial-intelligence business. That helped drive Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child for Wall Street’s frenzy around AI, up 12.9% a day after it lost 7%.
How such Big Tech stocks perform matters a lot because they’re Wall Street’s most valuable companies, and that gives them the biggest sway on the S&P 500. A handful of these stocks, known as the “Magnificent Seven,” drove the
Such criticism hasn’t gone away, and
Stronger-than-expected profit reports from companies outside the Magnificent Seven also helped lift the market.
DuPont rose 4.1% after delivering better profit and revenue than expected, thanks in part to a recovery for the electronics business, and the chemical giant raised its financial forecasts for the full year.
They helped offset a 3% drop for
All told, the S&P 500 rose 85.86 points to 5,522.30. The Dow gained 99.46 to 40,842.79, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 451.98 to 17,599.40.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year
Yields fell in the morning after a report showed
While workers would surely like such numbers to be stronger, it could be the type of “Goldilocks” data that
Some of Wednesday’s strongest action was in the oil market, where the price for a barrel of benchmark
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s
Indexes rallied 2.1% in
Stock indexes also rose across
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AP Business Writer
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