Wall Street ticks closer to its record after Oracle rallies
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes ticked higher on Thursday following another encouraging update on inflation across the country.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% to pull back with 1.6% of its record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 101 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.2%.
Oracle pushed upward on the market after jumping 13.3%. The tech giant delivered stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and CEO Safra Catz said it expects revenue growth “will be dramatically higher” in its upcoming fiscal year.
That helped offset a 4.8% loss for Boeing after Air India said a London-bound flight crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad airport Thursday with 242 passengers and crew onboard. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a residential area near the airport five minutes after taking off. The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known.
Stocks broadly got some help from easing Treasury yields in the bond market following the latest update on inflation. Thursday’s said inflation at the wholesale level wasn’t as bad last month as economists expected, and it followed a report on Wednesday saying something similar about the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling.
Wall Street took it as a signal that the Federal Reserve will have more leeway to cut interest rates later this year in order to give the economy a boost.
The Federal Reserve has been hesitant to lower interest rates, and it’s been on hold this year after cutting at the end of last year, because it’s waiting to see how much President Donald Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation. While lower rates can goose the economy by encouraging businesses and households to borrow, they can also accelerate inflation.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.35% from 4.41% late Wednesday and from roughly 4.80% early this year.
Besides the inflation data, a separate report on jobless claims also helped to weigh on Treasury yields. It said slightly more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, and the total number remained at the highest level in eight months. That could be an indication of a rise in layoffs across the country.
“We believe that were it not for the uncertainty caused by the tariffs, the combined information coming from the inflation and labor-market data would have compelled the Fed to have resumed cutting its policy rate by now,” according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie.
The Fed’s next meeting on interest rates is scheduled for next week, but the nearly unanimous expectation on Wall Street is that it will stand pat again. Traders are betting it’s likely to begin cutting in September, according to data from CME Group.
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