NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are edging higher after the latest reading on inflation came in roughly as expected, leaving open the question of when Wall Street will get the lower interest rates that it craves.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher early Friday, though it’s still on track for its first losing week in the last six. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 75 points, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.
1%. Gap jumped after delivering stronger-than-expected results. Treasury yields eased in the bond market after the inflation reading came in as forecast.
That cut into gains for yields earlier in the week, which hurt stocks. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Wall Street quickly turned from losses to gains early Friday after government data showed that inflation eased for the first time this year. Futures for the S&P 500 were 0.3% higher before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up about 0.
2%. Markets cheered after the Fed's preferred measure of inflation showed prices cooled slightly last month, to a gain of 2.8% year over year, the same as March.
That same gauge accelerated in the first three months of 2024, disrupting what had been a steady decline and torching any notion that the Fed would start cutting rates early this year. The U.S.
central bank began hiking rates in March of 2022 in a bid to extinguish the four-decade high inflation that came as the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020.
