Investors awaited the final day of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony on Thursday, as well as a slew of economic news, including a weekly update on Americans seeking jobless benefits. What is the current state of stock benchmarks?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YMU21, -0.45 percent YM00, -0.45 percent were trading 178 points down at 34,638, a 0.5 percent drop.
Futures on the S&amp
The Nasdaq-100 futures NQU21, -0.00 percent NQ00, -0.00 percent dropped 8.75 points to 14,883.25, a drop of less than 0.1 percent.
The Dow DJIA, +0.13 percent gained 44.44 points, or 0.1 percent, to 34,933.23; the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.12 percent gained 5.09 points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,374.30; and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.22 percent lost 32.70 points, or 0.2 percent, to 14,644.95.
What is the market’s driving force? Despite Fed Chairman Powell’s assurances that the central bank would intervene fast if pricing pressures get out of hand, hand-wringing about global economic growth has resurfaced early Thursday. On the first of two days of hearing, the central bank president told lawmakers that pandemic-related supply-chain bottlenecks had created “the ideal storm of high demand and low supply,” which “should partially reverse as the bottlenecks’ effects unravel.” Powell is scheduled to speak before the Senate Banking Committee at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time later in the session. Powell said Wednesday that the central bank was not in a rush to reduce its monthly purchases of Treasurys and mortgage-related assets, which are currently at $120 billion, citing expectations that pricing pressures will eventually fade, and that the economy was still “a long way off” from meeting the Fed’s self-described goals of “substantial further progress.” The big concern currently plaguing financial markets is how long pricing pressures will last. In a Thursday research note, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, wrote, “These nagging concerns about inflation, transitory or otherwise, have continued to dominate sentiment, while worries over the pace and persistence of rising prices appear to be tempering optimism over the wider global recovery story.” Meanwhile, the proliferation of the coronavirus delta strain was causing concern on Wall Street. The “delta variation is spreading, people are dying, we can’t actually just wait for things to get more rational,” Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, told CNN on Wednesday. According to a tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US immunization program has slowed, with 48.2 percent of the population fully immunized. The US Labor Department will release its weekly jobless benefit claims data for the week ended July 7 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, which is projected to show 368,000 claims, down from 373,000 the week before. Meanwhile, according to a consensus of economists polled by Econoday, a report on manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia area, the Philly Fed index, for July will show a value of 28.5. The Empire State Manufacturing Index, a separate measure of manufacturing activity in New York state, is expected to come in at 18.3 in July. Any reading above zero on each index implies that things are getting better. At 8:30 a.m., the Federal Reserve will release data on import and export prices for June, as well as a report on industrial production. At 11 a.m., Chicago Fed President Charles Evans will talk. Which businesses are being scrutinized?
After Netflix Inc. NFLX announced its first significant videogame hire, GameStop Corp. shares GME dropped in premarket trade Thursday, possibly signaling a move beyond its streaming-video roots.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) saw its stock rise in premarket trading on Thursday after the healthcare provider posted second-quarter profit and revenue that above forecasts and improved its full-year estimate, despite continuing to expect COVID-19 to eat into results.
Ross Stores Inc. ROST announced late Wednesday that Chief Financial Officer Travis Marquette has resigned with immediate effect to pursue a position with an unnamed company./n
Read More
