Yahoo Finance Record Closing Highs Amid Interest Rate Catch-22
Wednesday, May 15th, 2024
Most major stock market indices are at all-time highs as of Wednesday’s close. Today’s CPI report for April set the stock market alight from the moment of its release prior to the opening bell — and this was coming off an all-time-high close for the Nasdaq just yesterday. This CPI report put the domestic inflation trajectory back on the “soft landing” path, where it had veered away from somewhat over the previous two months, and now the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are at their highest closing levels in history. Only the Russell 2000 still has some room to make up.
On the day, the Dow grabbed another +350 points, +0.88%. The blue-chip index is now up more than +5% for the month of May so far. The S&P rose +1.17% today, climbing over 5300 on the index as of the session’s close for the first time. The Nasdaq has gained more than +7% over the past month, including today’s +231 points, +1.40%. The Russell 2000, while having grown +8% from its mid-April lows, is still 15 points away from its all-time high close set in late March of this year.
We may not be seeing any interest rates cuts for a while. With such robust market activity with rates at historically high levels for the past 10 months, there’s no clear path toward cutting from our current +5.25-5.50% that wouldn’t re-ignite elements in our economy, like the housing market. Yet the prospect of lower interest rates is precisely the reason for this latest bullish market appetite. It’s actually a Catch-22 of sorts, albeit one that enriches market participants in the near term.
Cisco Systems CSCO beat fiscal Q3 estimates this afternoon. This is wholly typical, as the networking giant hasn’t posted a bottom-line miss pretty much ever. Earnings of 87 cents per share outpaced the Zacks consensus by 4 cents (though down from the $1.00 per share a year ago). Revenues of $12.8 billion bettered the $12.5 billion estimate, though forward revenue guidance for both the current quarter and fiscal year are down from previous estimates. Yet the shares jumped +5% on the news, as the stock had been floundering year to date.
We’ll have to wait a while for another market-impact event the size of today’s CPI report. Tomorrow brings us a new Weekly Jobless Claims and Q1 earnings reported for Walmart WMT. Initial claims began to creep notably higher last week for the first time in months, though they remained consistent with a healthy labor market. Walmart is expected to fetch +6% earnings growth year over year with +4.6% revenue growth. The biggest of the big-box retailers is looking for its second earnings beat in the last three quarters.
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