Stock Market Today: Wall Street hits pause on searing May rally
Published 3:47 am Friday, May 17, 2024
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which topped the 40,000 point mark yesterday, is on pace for its fifth consecutive weekly gain.
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U.S. equity futures edged lower Friday, while Treasury yields and the dollar ticked higher, as investors looked set to hit pause on a month-long rally on Wall Street that has lifted all three major benchmark to records.
Stocks ended modestly lower last night, after touching records earlier in the session, as investors took profits from the market’s recent gains and digested a series of hawkish comments on rate hikes from a host of Federal Reserve officials.
“One data point is not a trend and one change does not determine the next three months,” Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic told an event in Washington in reference to the softer-than-expected April inflation report from earlier in the week.
Traders made modest adjustments to bets on a September rate cut. They pared the overall odds of a September move to around 69%, according to CME Group FedWatch data, while selling Treasury bonds.
BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty
Benchmark 10-year notes were marked 3 basis points higher in the overnight session at 4.389% while 2-year notes nudged 2 basis points higher to 4.786%.
The U.S. dollar index, meanwhile, added 0.27% against its major global peers to trade at 104.739 heading into the start of the New York session.
On Wall Street, stocks are priced for a muted open, but are still on pace for a fourth straight weekly advance. That’s been powered by interest-rate-cut hopes and stronger-than-expected earnings forecasts.
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Futures contracts tied to the S&P 500, which is up 11.05% for the year, suggest a 2-point opening-bell dip for the benchmark, with the Nasdaq priced for a
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is on a five-week win streak and topped the 40,000 point mark for the first time last night, is set for a modest 10-point pullback.
Stocks on the move include semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT) , which slipped 1% in premarket trading after a muted revenue forecast clouded its second quarter earnings beat.
Videogame maker Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) , meanwhile, fell 2.8% after planning the release of its next blockbuster, “Grand Theft Auto VI,” for fall 2025. That’s just outside the end of its current fiscal year, which ends next March.
Reddit (RDDT) shares, on the other side, surged 13.7% after the newly listed social-media website unveiled a new content sharing deal with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
More Wall Street Analysts:
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- Analysts weigh in on Google-parent Alphabet’s stock after cloud event
- Analysts revamp Disney stock price target after proxy fight
In overseas markets, Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.38% lower in London while the region-wide Stoxx 600 benchmark fell 0.33% in Frankfurt.
Overnight in Asia, stocks in China got a boost from a new drive from Beijing to support the domestic property market, although the MSCI ex-Japan index was marked 0.14% lower into the close of trading.
A modestly firmer yen, meanwhile, as well as a pullback in tech stocks kept the Nikkei 225 in the red, with the index closing 0.34% lower at 38,787.83 points.
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