US stocks edged higher on Thursday after the worst sell-off in months on Wall Street, as investors recalibrated their timeline for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve and prepared for a heavy-hitting round of megacap tech earnings.
The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.5%, while the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) gained 0.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), which suffered a more than 2% decline Wednesday, was trading up about 0.6%.
The financial world is moving fast and furious this week, but the Fed remained the focus Thursday morning. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, while cementing a pivot in the central bank’s rate plans, gave investors looking for quick interest rate cuts a wake-up call. He hinted that he views it unlikely that the bank would begin to cut rates at the Fed’s next meeting in March, something that was viewed largely as a toss-up earlier this week.
Indeed, according to the CME FedWatch tool, investors were pricing in about a two-thirds chance of another hold at the March meeting, while almost all bets are on a small — or larger — cut come May.
Meanwhile, members of the “Magnificent Seven” will take center stage after the closing bell, with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Meta (NASDAQ: META) set to report earnings. Tuesday’s first batch of Big Tech results from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) failed to live up to investors’ lofty expectations, helping send those stocks lower.
Lest we forget, the economic world has one more narrative-fueling data point waiting this week. Investors will get a snapshot of January’s job market with Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report.
