Wall Street rallies after swerving on Fed chair’s comments
Wall Street rallied Tuesday after the Federal Reserve signaled last week’s strong jobs report won’t by itself change where interest rates are heading, as some investors had feared.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 climbed 1.3% to close a shaky day during which stocks pinballed between losses and gains as Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell gave his first public comments since raising rates last week. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.8%, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 1.9%.
High inflation and how high the Fed will take interest rates to combat it have been at the center of Wall Street’s wild movements for the last year. Powell said Tuesday that progress is being made on inflation, though a long battle remains.
That echoed similar comments he made last week after the Fed approved its smallest increase to interest rates since March. But that was before a jolting jobs report Friday showed U.S. employers added a third of a million more jobs than expected last month.
The shocking show of strength raised concerns about upward pressure on inflation and worries the Fed may end up keeping rates higher for longer, as it’s been warning. Higher rates can drive down inflation but also hurt the economy and investment prices.
Inflation has a way of affecting nearly every aspect of your finances, including the size of your tax refund and your retirement contributions.
But Powell said Tuesday at the Economic Club of Washington that the market’s big moves since the jobs report have gotten it closer to being in sync with the Fed’s thinking. Not only did stocks fall, but Wall Street also raised its forecast for how high the Fed will take rates by the summer.
Investors also reduced bets that the Fed may cut rates later this year. Rate cuts can stimulate the economy and stock markets.
“We have a significant road ahead to get inflation down to 2%,” which is the Fed’s target, Powell said Tuesday. “There’s been an expectation that it will go away quickly and painlessly. I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed.”
Powell also said that if more jobs reports or inflation data come in way above expectations, the Fed may ultimately raise rates even higher than it’s been saying.
After pulling its key overnight rate all the way to a range of 4.50% to 4.75%, up from virtually zero a year ago, the Fed has said it envisions a couple of additional increases before holding steady through the end of the year.
The Federal Reserve extended its fight against high inflation Wednesday by raising its key interest rate by a quarter point, its eighth hike since March.
Treasury yields have zoomed higher in recent days on expectations for a firmer Fed. They held relatively steady Tuesday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set rates for mortgages and other important loans, rose to 3.68% from 3.64% late Monday. The two-year yield, which moves more on expectations for the Fed, dipped to 4.49% from 4.47%. It remains near its highest level since November.
Despite all the market’s recent moves, stock prices are still up a healthy amount since the start of the year. The S&P 500 is up 8.5%. Much of that was the result of easing worries the economy may fall into a severe recession, a scenario described in markets as a “hard landing.”
“If I had to take a camp today, it would be in the soft-landing one, if only because of the strength of the labor market,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird. He said he sees a “slowdown or maybe a soft recession, but that’s what I think a ‘soft landing’ means now” for the economy.
“The problem is that with the market rally to start the year, you’ve got that scenario priced in almost,” he said. “There are still risks to the downside.”
A relatively lackluster earnings reporting season on Wall Street is also rolling on.
Carrier Global dropped 3.8% despite matching analysts’ expectations for profits in the latest quarter. It also gave a forecast for revenue this upcoming year that was slightly above Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts pointed to a deceleration in orders.
On the winning end was DuPont, which climbed 7.5% after reporting stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Activision Blizzard gained 5.6% after the video game company reported stronger revenue and profit than expected for its latest quarter.
The Federal Reserve extended its fight against high inflation Wednesday by raising its key interest rate by a quarter point, its eighth hike since March.
A 4.2% move higher for Microsoft also helped lift the market. It said it’s using ChatGPT-like technology in its Bing search engine.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 52.92 points to 4,164.00, the Dow gained 265.67 points to close at 34,156.69 and the Nasdaq jumped 226.34 points to 12,113.79.
In stock markets overseas, Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 lost 0.5% after the Reserve Bank of Australia raised its benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.35%. It said more increases are planned to lower inflation that is at a 33-year high of 7.8% to its target range of 2% to 3%.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 slipped less than 0.1% after the government reported wages in December rose 4.8% over a year earlier. That was close to a three-decade high as workers press for higher pay to keep pace with inflation.
AP writers Joe McDonald and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
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