Stock market today: Wall Street leaps on hopes cooling inflation means no more rate hikes
Stocks are leaping after a report on U.S. inflation sent waves of relief through Wall Street
NEW YORK — Stocks are leaping Tuesday after an encouraging report on U.S. inflation sent waves of relief through Wall Street.
The S&P 500 was 1.6% higher and near its best level in two months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 397 points, or 1.2%, as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% higher.
The highly anticipated report showed not only that overall inflation slowed last month from September, but so did a key underlying figure that economists see as a better indicator of future trends. The slowdown bolstered bets on Wall Street that inflation is cooling enough for the Federal Reserve to finally be done with its market-crunching hikes to interest rates.
Such hopes lifted all kinds of investments, and more than 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 climbed in a widespread rally. Technology and other high-growth stocks tend to get some of the biggest boosts from easier rates, and a 2.5% jump for Amazon and 2.1% rise for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
Stocks of smaller companies also got a huge boost, with the Russell 2000 index of small stocks potentially on track for its best day of the year. It surged 3.6%. Smaller companies are often seen as more dependent on borrowing cash to grow, which makes them particularly vulnerable to high interest rates.
The inflation data helped to buoy hopes on Wall Street that the Fed may actually pull off the balancing act of slowing the economy and hurting investment prices just enough to grind down inflation, but not so much as to cause a painful recession. That is still not a certainty, though.
The Fed has yanked its main interest rate to
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