Wall St. advances as investors digest Fed minutes

Reuters Videos
1 年前

STORY: Wall Street's main indexes closed higher Wednesday after the release of minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve's last meeting fueled investor hopes that rates would remain steady.

The Dow ticked up roughly two-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 gained more than four-tenths and the Nasdaq added seven-tenths.

The Fed notes pointed to uncertainties around the economy, oil prices and financial markets as supporting "the case for proceeding carefully” when it comes to further rate hikes to tame inflation.

But Matt Stucky, Chief Equity Portfolio Manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management, notes that the Fed's next decisions will take into account the consumer price index reading for September, due out on Thursday.

“Right now we would say it's probably a 50/50 chance whether or not the Federal Reserve is going to hike interest rates further. However, what the Fed is going to be laser focused in on is core services, ex housing inflation, alongside the overall tightness in the labor markets. If overall core services, ex housing inflation, continues to decelerate back down to a level that they think is in alignment with their overall 2% inflation goal, we're likely to see them pause. However, if we don't get that, in addition to continued resilience in the labor markets where wage gains are north of 4%, you can very easily see a scenario where the Federal Reserve feels like they need to do more in the form of higher interest rates.”

Data on Wedesday showed that U.S. producer prices increased more than expected in September amid higher energy costs, but the core number, which strips out food and energy prices, ticked down slightly.

Among individual movers, Birkenstock made a flatfooted public debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of the 250-year-old German sandal maker closed down more than 12.5% from their IPO price of $46.

And shares of ExxonMobil fell more than 3.5% after the oil and gas producer agreed to buy rival Pioneer Natural Resources in an all-stock deal valued at $59.5 billion. Shares of Pioneer closed up more than 1%.