Wall Street soars to records as Dow leaps 500 in a rate-cut rally that swept the world

[September 20, 2024]   By STAN CHOE

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street romped to records Thursday as a delayed jubilation swept markets worldwide following the Federal Reserve’s big cut to interest rates.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.7% for one of its best days of the year and topped its last all-time high set in July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 522 points, or 1.3%, to beat its own record set on Monday, and the Nasdaq composite led the market with a 2.5% spurt.

The rally was widespread, and the company behind Olive Garden and Ruth’s Chris, Darden Restaurants, led the way in the S&P 500 with a jump of 8.3%. It said sales trends have been improving since a sharp step down in July, and it announced a delivery partnership with Uber.

Nvidia, meanwhile, barreled 4% higher and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Lower interest rates weaken criticism by a bit that its shares and those of other influential Big Tech companies look too expensive following the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Wall Street’s gains followed rallies for markets across Europe and Asia after the Federal Reserve delivered the first cut to interest rates in more than four years late on Wednesday.

It was a momentous move, closing the door on a run where the Fed kept its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of slowing the U.S. economy enough to stamp out high inflation. Now that inflation has come down from its peak two summers ago, Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed can focus more on keeping the job market solid and the economy out of a recession.

Wall Street’s initial reaction to Wednesday’s cut was a yawn, after markets had already run up for months on expectations for coming reductions to rates. Stocks ended up edging lower after swinging a few times.

“Yet we come in today and have a reversal of the reversal,” said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG. He said he did not anticipate such a big jump for stocks on Thursday.

Some analysts said the market could be relieved that the Fed’s Powell was able to thread the needle in his press conference and suggest the deeper-than-usual cut was just a “recalibration” of policy and not an urgent move it had to take to prevent a recession.

That bolstered hopes the Federal Reserve can successfully walk its tightrope and get inflation down to its 2% target without a recession. So too did a couple reports on the economy released Thursday. One showed fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, another signal that layoffs across the country remain low.

The pressure is nevertheless still on the Fed because the job market and hiring have begun to slow under the weight of higher interest rates. Some critics say the central bank waited too long to cut rates and may have damaged the economy.

Powell, though, said Fed officials are not in “a rush to get this done” and would make decisions on policy at each successive meeting depending on what the incoming data says.

The news conference of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell appears on television screens on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Some investment banks raised their forecasts for how much the Federal Reserve will ultimately cut interest rates, anticipating even deeper reductions than Fed officials. Forecasts released Wednesday show Fed officials expect to cut interest rates by another half of a percentage point in 2024 and another full point in 2025. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 4.75% to 5%.

Lower interest rates help financial markets in two big ways. They ease the brakes off the economy by making it easier for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money. They also give a boost to prices of all kinds of investments, from gold to bonds to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin rose above $63,000 Thursday, up from about $27,000 a year ago.

An adage suggests investors should not “fight the Fed” and should instead ride the rising tide when the central bank is cutting interest rates. Wall Street was certainly doing that Thursday. But this economic cycle has thrown out conventional wisdoms repeatedly after the COVID-19 pandemic created an instant recession that gave way to the worst inflation in generations.

Wall Street is worried that inflation could remain tougher to fully subdue than in the past. And while lower rates can help goose the economy, they can also give inflation more fuel.

The upcoming U.S. presidential election could also keep uncertainty reigning in the market. A fear is that both the Democrats and Republicans could push for policies that add to the U.S. government’s debt, which could keep upward pressure on interest rates regardless of the Fed’s moves.

History may also offer few clues about how things may progress given how unusual the conditions are. This looks to be beginning with higher expectations for rate cuts than past easing cycles, according to strategists at Bank of America.

The economic conditions of this cycle may resemble 1995 a bit, but unfortunately “no great analogs exist,” the strategists led by Alex Cohen wrote in a BofA Global Research report.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 3.71%, where it was late Wednesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell to 3.58% from 3.63%.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 95.38 points to 5,713.64. The Dow jumped 522.09 to 42,025.19, and the Nasdaq composite leaped 440.68 to 18,013.98.

In stock markets aboard, indexes climbed even more across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They rose 2.3% in France, 2.1% in Japan and 2% in Hong Kong.

The FTSE 100 added 0.9% in London after the Bank of England kept interest rates there on hold. The next big move for a central bank arrives Friday, when the Bank of Japan will announce its latest decision on interest rates.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

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