A worry on Wall Street is that the cuts may prove to be too late, with many US shoppers already struggling under the weight of high prices and stretched ability to spend more.
Vera Bradley’s stock dropped 4.6 per cent after the designer of handbags and the parent company of the Pura Vida brand reported weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It pointed to “stubbornly persistent macro consumer headwinds.”
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Trump Media & Technology Group sank 10.5 per cent to worsen its rough run since March. The company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has often risen and fallen with expectations for Trump’s re-election chances, and he’s coming off a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since closing above $US66 in early March, the stock has tumbled to $16.68. That affects Trump particularly because he is the company’s largest shareholder.
On the winning side of the US stock market were solar-energy companies, which are seen as doing better under a Democratic White House than a Republican one. First Solar jumped 15.2 per cent.
Big Tech also once again lifted the market. A handful of these behemoths has pulled away from the rest of the stock market and accounted for most of the S&P 500’s return through the early part of this year, in large part on excitement about the artificial-intelligence boom.
They faltered during the summer on worries that investors had carried their stock prices too high, including a 27 per cent drop for Nvidia at one point, but they’ve been firming in the last couple of weeks.
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Besides the 8.1 per cent jump for Nvidia, gains of 2.8 per cent for Amazon, 2.1 per cent for Microsoft and 6.8 per cent for Broadcom were the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Because these companies are among Wall Street’s largest by market value, their movements pack more punch on the index than almost every other stock.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 58.61 points to 5,554.13. The Dow rose 124.75 to 40,861.71, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 369.65 to 17,395.53.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.66 per cent from 3.64 per cent late Tuesday. The two-year yield, which more closely follows expectations for Fed action, rose more, to 3.65 per cent from 3.59 per cent.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.5 per cent after a Japanese central bank official was quoted by Japanese media as indicating the Bank of Japan was getting ready to raise interest rates. The comments also pushed the value of the Japanese yen higher against the US dollar, a move that earlier in the summer helped send financial markets around the world reeling.
AP
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Source Agencies
