NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher Thursday as Wall Street counts down to what’s supposed to be the main event of the week, a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell coming on Friday.
The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in early trading, just 0.5% below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 105 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.
Treasury yields were also ticking higher in the bond market despite a report showing slightly more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than expected. Worries have been rising about the strength of the economy, which has been slowing under the weight of high interest rates meant to get inflation under control.
The wide expectation is that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its next meeting in September, which would be the first such easing since the COVID crash of 2020. The Fed has hiked its main interest rate to the highest level in more than two decades in hopes of slowing the economy by just enough to stifle inflation but not so much that it causes a recession.
That’s why so much attention is on Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Powell will be speaking Friday at an annual economic symposium that’s been home to big policy announcements by the Fed in the past. The hope is Powell will give some clues about how quickly and deeply the Fed may cut rates to ease conditions for the economy.
In the meantime, U.S. companies continue to report mostly better-than-expected profits for the springtime.
Agilent Technologies rose 1.9% after delivering both profit and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ forecasts. CEO Padraig McDonnell said market conditions continued to be challenging for the company, which sells instruments and software for laboratories, but “we saw steady signs of improvement as anticipated.”
Internet-connected exercise company Peloton jumped 19.5% after it topped sales forecasts and lost less money in the quarter than analysts were expecting. It achieved modest revenue growth for the first time in more than two years.
On the losing side of Wall Street, Snowflake fell 10.7% despite also topping analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue in the latest quarter. It gave a forecast for product revenue in the current quarter that fell short of what analysts were estimating.
Advance Auto Parts tumbled 19.1% after its profit for the latest quarter came up short of Wall Street’s expectations. It cited a “challenging demand environment” and cut its forecast for profit over the full year well below what Wall Street was expecting.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.83% from 3.80% late Wednesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes mostly made modest moves across Asian and Europe. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2% after the Bank of Korea decided at its monetary policy meeting to keep rates unchanged.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and jumped 1.4%.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
