That’s why so much attention is on Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Powell will speak Friday at an economic symposium that’s been home to big Fed policy announcements in the past. The hope is Powell will give clues about how quickly and deeply the Fed may cut rates to ease conditions for the economy.
One danger is if expectations for coming cuts have gone overboard among investors, something that has frequently been the case historically. That could make the drop in Treasury yields since the spring overdone. The drop has helped pull mortgage rates lower, which in turn helped sales of previously occupied homes stop a four-month slide in July.
In the meantime, US companies continue to report mostly better-than-expected profits for the springtime.
Internet-connected exercise company Peloton soared 38.4 per cent after it topped sales forecasts and lost less money in the latest quarter than analysts were expecting. It achieved modest revenue growth for the first time in more than two years.
Another winner of the pandemic that saw its fortunes weaken afterward, Zoom Video Communications, also rose following its profit report. It climbed 13 per cent after delivering better earnings and revenue for the latest quarter than expected.
But many more stocks were falling on Wall Street than rising, including Nvidia, which was the heaviest single weight on the S&P 500. It erased an early gain to fall 3.4 per cent ahead of its own highly anticipated profit report coming next week.
It was briefly the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 earlier in the day, but its stock has been shaky over the last month amid worries that its price shot too high in investors’ frenzy around artificial intelligence. Even with Thursday’s loss, Nvidia is still up more than 150 per cent for the year so far.
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Also on the losing side of Wall Street was Snowflake, which fell 13.7 per cent despite topping analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue in the latest quarter. It gave a forecast for product revenue in the current quarter that fell short of what analysts were estimating.
Advance Auto Parts tumbled 16.1 per cent after its profit for the latest quarter came up short of Wall Street’s expectations. It cited a “challenging demand environment” and cut its forecast for profit over the full year well below what Wall Street was expecting.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.86 per cent from 3.80 per cent late Wednesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes made mostly modest moves across Asia and Europe. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2 per cent after the Bank of Korea decided at its monetary policy meeting to keep rates unchanged.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and jumped 1.4 per cent.
AP
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