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How the Federal Reserve under Jerome Powell will handle red-hot inflation is key for investors.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The stock market was pausing Wednesday, after a rally in technology stocks on Tuesday. Next up: the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s most recent meeting.
Shortly after the open, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
was up 31 points, or 0.1%. The
S&P 500
and the technology-heavy
Nasdaq Composite
were both up 0.1%.
The market is taking a slight breather from Tuesday’s action, which saw the Nasdaq jump almost 2%, bringing the S&P 500 into the green with it. That rally came as markets grew more fearful about an economic slowdown—or recession—which makes faster-growing tech stocks more attractive and more economically-sensitive ones less appealing.
Concerns about the economy are being seen everywhere. The 10-year Treasury yield, a barometer of the market’s expectation for longer-term economic growth, has dropped to 2.77% from a multi-year peak of about 3.5%, hit in mid-June. The price of WTI crude oil is down about 15% in the past month to $100 a barrel. Oil has risen slightly Wednesday.
The root cause of the problem is that the Federal Reserve has had to lift interest rates rapidly in order to fight stubbornly high inflation. Wednesday, markets will hear more from the Fed when it releases minutes from its latest meeting in the afternoon. Markets expect to see evidence that more hikes are on the way, but are hoping to see that the central bank will only lift the benchmark lending rate by half of a percentage point at its next meeting rather than three-quarters of a point.
“FOMC minutes (released today) will be given close attention for any guidance on further greater-than-50bp hikes and impact on growth concerns on policy,” wrote Citigroup’s Saumesh Dutta.
Overseas, the pan-European
Stoxx 600
has jumped 1.8% as stocks across the region bounced back from a steep fall on Tuesday. Asian indexes were firmly in the red, with the
Shanghai Composite
losing 1.4% amid concerns about a new spate of Covid-19 cases in Shanghai, which recently endured a severe and economically painful lockdown to deal with outbreaks of coronavirus disease.
Here are some stocks on the move Wednesday:
Amazon
(ticker: AMZN) was down 0.7% after the company struck a deal with
Just Eat Takeaway.com
(JET.U.K.) to give its U.S. Prime users a one-year membership to food delivery group Grubhub.
Rocket Cos.
(RKT) stock has gained 8.2% after getting upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo.
RingCentral
(RNG) stock has dropped 5.3% after getting downgraded to Hold from Buy at Needham.
Union Pacific
(UNP) stock was up 0.7% even after getting downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna.
Moelis & Co
.
(MC) stock was down 2.6% after getting downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS.
Write to Jacob Sonenshine at jacob.sonenshine@barrons.com and Jack Denton at jack.denton@dowjones.com
