US stocks tick higher as Wall Street waits for a speech on interest rates
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher on Friday ahead of a highly anticipated speech about where U.S. interest rates may be heading.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, coming off its fifth straight modest loss after setting an all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 273 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit as the countdown dwindles to a speech coming from the chair of the Federal Reserve at an annual symposium for central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The setting has been home to big policy announcements from the Fed in the past, and the hope on Wall Street is that Jerome Powell may hint that cuts to interest rates may be coming soon.
The Fed has been holding its main interest rate steady so far this year, mostly out of fear that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher, but a surprisingly weak report on job growth earlier this month may have suddenly made the job market a bigger priority.
A cut in interest rates could give the economy a boost, but it could also risk worsening inflation at the same time. Trump, meanwhile, has angrily pushed for cuts to interest rates, often insulting Powell while doing so.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.30% from 4.33% late Thursday. But the two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its main interest rate, edged down to 3.78% from 3.79%.
On Wall Street, Ross Stores rose 2.8% after the retailer reported a stronger profit for its latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Jim Conroy said sales trends picked up at the end of the quarter in July following a lull in June.
Shares of Nio, a Chinese electric-vehicle maker, that trade in the United States climbed 6.5% after it began pre-sales of its flagship premium SUV model, the ES8.
On the losing end of Wall Street was Nvidia, which fell 1.3%. The company, whose chips are powering much of the world’s move in to artificial-intelligence technology, has seen its stock struggle this week amid criticism that it and other AI superstars shot too high, too fast and became too expensive.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said Friday that the company is discussing a potential new computer chip designed for China with the Trump administration. The chips are graphics processing units, or GPUs, a type of device used to build and update a range of AI systems. But they are less powerful than Nvidia’s top semiconductors today, which cannot be sold to China due to U.S. national security restrictions.
In stock markets abroad, Germany’s DAX added 0.1% after government data showed that its economy shrank by 0.3% in the second quarter compared with the previous three-month period.
Indexes rose across much of the rest of Europe and Asia, with Shangai’s 1.4% rally and South Korea’s 0.9% rise two of the standouts.
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AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
By STAN CHOE
AP Business Writer
