Similar to the Australian market, the highlight for Wall Street this week will likely be the Federal Reserve’s meeting on interest rates, which ends on Wednesday local time. The widespread expectation is for the central bank to hold its main interest rate steady at its highest level since 2001.
But Fed officials will also give updated forecasts for where they see interest rates heading this year and in the long run. They earlier had penciled in three cuts to rates this year, which would relieve pressure on the economy and financial system.
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Recent reports on inflation have consistently been coming in worse than expected, though. That could force the Fed to trim how many rate cuts it foresees delivering this year.
Such a move would be a sore disappointment for Wall Street, where stock prices have already run up partly on expectations for lower rates. Treasury yields in the bond market have also eased since last autumn on such expectations, though they’ve pared those losses on worries about stubbornly high inflation.
It’s possible that the Fed could keep its main interest rate near its current level throughout this year, according to Joe Davis, Vanguard’s chief global economist. The investment giant recently raised its baseline outlook for the US economy to see no recession in 2024, but it also raised its forecast slightly for underlying inflation trends.
Across the Pacific, the Bank of Japan will announce its latest decision on interest rates on Tuesday. It’s been keeping rates below zero in hopes of goosing the economy and inflation. Speculation is rising that wages for Japanese workers are rising enough for the Bank of Japan to finally move rates higher. And in the UK, the Bank of England will announce its latest decision on interest rates later in the week.
On Wall Street, Nvidia rose 0.7 per cent after paring an earlier, bigger gain as it kicked off its annual conference for developers.
A frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology on Wall Street has sent the stocks of Nvidia and other players zooming so high that critics call it a bubble. Nvidia has grown into the US stock market’s third-largest stock.
Other Big Tech stocks also pushed the S&P 500 upward to snap a three-day losing streak, its longest in more than two months. Alphabet rallied 4.6 per cent, and Tesla jumped 6.3 per cent to trim its loss for the year so far.
On the losing end of Wall Street was Hertz Global Holdings, which skidded 6.2 per cent to bring its loss for the year so far to 31.6 per cent. Its chair and CEO, Stephen Scherr, will resign at the end of March. The company named Wayne “Gil” West as its CEO. He’s a former executive at Cruise, the self-driving car company, and at Delta Air Lines.
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Trading was mixed on Wall Street, and the smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 index slipped 0.7 per cent.
Boeing sank another 1.5 per cent to bring its loss for the year to 31 per cent. It’s been struggling with concerns about its manufacturing quality, and its latest negative headline came on Friday. Workers found a panel missing on an older Boeing 737-800 after it arrived at its destination in southern Oregon from San Francisco.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.33 per cent from 4.31 per cent late Friday.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.7 per cent. Shares of both Nissan Motor and Honda climbed after the two automakers agreed on a partnership in electric vehicles.
Outside of a 1 per cent jump for stocks in Shanghai, moves were much more modest elsewhere across Asia and Europe.
AP
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Source Agencies
