Stock market today: Wall Street drifts near records, Japanese stocks climb
By Elaine Kurtenbach And Matt Ott, The Associated Press on December 19, 2023.
NEW YORK (AP) – Wall Street is drifting near record highs amid hopes that moves by Japan’s central bank to keep interest rates easy for investors could be a preview for the rest of the world. The S&P 500 was up 0.2% early Tuesday, just 1% shy of its record set a little bit less than two years ago. The Dow edged up 54 points. The Nasdaq composite was up 0.3%. Markets abroad were mixed, except for Japan. The Nikkei 225 jumped 1.4% after the country’s central bank decided to keep its benchmark rate below zero in hopes of encouraging more borrowing and spending. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. Wall Street inched modestly higher Tuesday as markets roll toward the end of 2024 on a seven-week winning streak. Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials each rose 0.2% before the bell. The broader market surged last week and added to solid December gains after the Federal Reserve signaled that inflation may have cooled enough for the central bank to shift to cutting interest rates in 2024. The Dow closed out last week with a record, while the S&P 500 ended the week with its longest weekly winning streak in six years, while edging closer to its all-time high. The benchmark S&P 500 is now up more than 23% this year, while the Nasdaq is up more than 42%. Lower interest rates typically take pressure off of financial markets. The Fed’s goal since 2022 has been to slow the economy and grind down prices for investments enough through high interest rates to get inflation under control. Economic growth has slowed, but has not dipped into recession, while inflation continues easing. Wall Street is betting that those conditions mean the Fed is done raising interest rates and could start cutting them in early 2024. Investors will get their last big inflation update of the year on Friday when the government releases its report on personal consumption expenditures. It’s the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation and has been easing since the middle of 2022. Analysts polled by FactSet expect the measure of inflation to soften to 2.8% in November from 3% in October. Investors will also have a few big earnings reports to review this week, which could give them a better sense of how companies and consumers are faring amid high interest rates and lingering inflation. Package delivery service FedEx will report its latest financial results after the bell on Tuesday and Cheerios maker General Mills will report its results on Wednesday. Athletic footwear giant Nike serves up its latest results on Thursday. After surging 26% Monday on news that it was selling itself to Nippon Steel, U.S. Steel is down slightly before the opening bell Tuesday. U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, standing on the roof of his home in Braddock, Pa. with U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works behind him, said he would attempt to prevent the sale based on national security issues. “Steel is always about security as well, too, and I am committed to doing anything I can do and using my platform and my position in order to block this,” Fetterman said in a post on X late Monday. Elsewhere, in Europe at midday Germany’s DAX gained 0.5% and the FTSE 100 in London was essentially unchanged. In Paris, the CAC 40 ticked up 0.1%. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 1.4% to 33,219.39 after the Bank of Japan kept its ultra-lax monetary policy unchanged, as expected. The dollar rose against the yen, climbing to 144.59 yen from 142.79. The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney added 0.8% to 7,489.10, while South Korea’s Kospi edged 0.1% higher to 2,568.55. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index declined 1% to 16,469.32 and the Shanghai Composite index gained less than 0.1% to 2,932.39. Bangkok’s SET edged 0.1% higher, while Taiwan’s Taiex fell 0.4%. Early Tuesday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 3.90% from 3.95% late Monday. U.S. benchmark crude oil was down 25 cents at $72.57 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 26 cents to $77.69 per barrel. The euro rose to $1.0972 from $1.0925 late Monday. On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the Nasdaq composite picked up 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished essentially flat after most of a 0.2% gain faded by late afternoon. 23-22
