Wall Street drifts around its records following a worldwide rally

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are drifting around their record levels on Wednesday after a rally spurred by hopes for lower U.S. interest rates wrapped around the world.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 285 points, or 0.6%, as of 1:19 p.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was mostly unchanged after setting its own record the day before.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market as expectations reached a virtual consensus that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rates for the first time this year at its next meeting in September. Lower rates can boost investment prices and the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow to buy houses, cars or equipment, though they risk worsening inflation.
Stock indexes jumped in Asia in their first trading after Tuesday's better-than-expected report on U.S. inflation triggered a jump in bets that a cut to interest rates is coming. Hong Kong's Hang Seng leaped 2.6%, Japan's Nikkei 225 rallied 1.3% and South Korea's Kospi climbed 1.1%.
Indexes also rose in Europe, though the moves were more modest after they already had the chance to trade on the U.S. inflation data the afternoon before. Germany's DAX returned 0.7%, and France's CAC 40 rose 0.7%.
On Wall Street, the hopes for lower interest rates are helping to drown out criticism that the U.S. stock market has grown too expensive after its big leap since hitting a low in April.
One way companies can make their stock prices look less expensive is to deliver strong growth in profits, and Brinker International became the latest to report stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind the Chili's brand said it saw more customers coming to its restaurants, and it's also making more profit off each $1 in sales.
'Chili's is officially back, baby back!' said CEO Kevin Hochman.
Its stock came into the day with a gain of 17.1% for the year so far, and it swung between gains and losses through the morning. It was most recently up 2.7%.
HanesBrands climbed 4.2% after it agreed to sell itself to Gildan Activewear for $2.2 billion in cash and Gildan stock. The deal would combine North Carolinas' HanesBrands with Canada's Gildan, and Gildan's stock that trades in the United States rose 10.7%.
Cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, which also owns crypto news site CoinDesk, surged in its debut on Wall Street. The stock nearly tripled from its $37 initial public offering price shortly after it started trading.
On the losing end of Wall Street were grocery stores and delivery companies, which fell after Amazon said it will offer fresh groceries to customers in more than 1,000 cities and towns through same-day delivery. Kroger fell 4.2%, and DoorDash dropped 4.7%, while Amazon rose 1.3%.
Cava Group sank 15.2% after the Mediterranean restaurant chain reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its profit topped forecasts. It also cut its forecast for 2025 growth in sales at restaurants that have been open for more than a year, where guest traffic has been roughly flat recently from year-ago levels.
CoreWeave lost 18.5% after the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running artificial-intelligence workloads, reported a larger loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased as expectations built for coming cuts to interest rates by the Fed.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.23% from 4.29% late Tuesday and from 4.50% in mid-July. That's a notable move for the bond market.
President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Fed's chair personally while doing so.
But the Fed has been hesitant so far because of the possibility that Trump's tariffs could make inflation much worse. Lowering rates would give inflation more fuel, potentially adding oxygen to a growing fire. That's why Fed officials have said they wanted to see more data come in about inflation before moving.
On Thursday, a report will show how bad inflation was at the wholesale level across the United States. Economists expect it to show inflation accelerated a touch to 2.4% in July from 2.3% in June.