Stocks are rising ahead of a busy week for central banks around the world that could dictate where interest rates go.
Recent reports on inflation have consistently been coming in worse than expected, though. That could force the Fed to say it will deliver fewer rate cuts this year.Such a move would be a sore disappointment for Wall Street, where stock prices have already run up partly on expectations for lower rates. Treasury yields in the bond market have also eased since last autumn on such expectations, though they’ve pared those losses on worries about stubbornly high inflation.
On Wall Street, Nvidia was 0.5 per cent higher after paring an earlier, bigger gain as it kicked off its annual conference for developers. Analysts say the widespread expectation is for Nvidia to unveil its next generation artificial-intelligence architecture, along with the growing use cases for AI.
Other Big Tech stocks were also pushing the S&P 500 upward. Apple rose 1.4 per cent, and Alphabet rallied 5 per cent. Tesla jumped 5.9 per cent to trim its loss for the year so far.On the losing end of Wall Street was Hertz Global Holdings, which skidded 4.2 per cent to bring its loss for the year so far to 30 per cent. Its chair and CEO, Stephen Scherr, will resign at the end of March. The company named Wayne “Gil” West as its CEO.