U.S. stocks rise Monday, attempting a bounce after shifting rate expectations triggered Wall Street’s worst week of 2023.How stocks are trading
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.14%
rose 115 points, or 0.3%, to 32,925.
The S&P 500
SPX,
+0.36%
advanced 21 points, or 0.6%, to 3,991.
The Nasdaq
COMP,
+0.71%
gained 91 points, or 0.8%, to trade at 11,489.
Stock indexes booked their biggest losses of 2023 last week. The Dow dropped 3% for its biggest weekly decline since the week ending Sept. 23, the S&P 500 retreated 2.7% for its third straight weekly fall and the Nasdaq fell 3.3%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq saw their biggest weekly declines since the week ending Dec. 9.
What’s driving markets Buyers set the stage early on Monday, delivering small gains for stock-index futures. The nascent rally comes after U.S. equities fell to a five-week low amid signs that relatively robust economic activity is helping keep inflation stubbornly high. The PCE inflation measure released on Friday showed price pressures remain elevated, reducing the chances that the Federal Reserve will consider easing monetary policy anytime soon and thus forcing bond yields higher. “Investors are coming to grips with rates being higher for longer and Friday’s hotter-than-anticipated inflation data effectively confirmed just that,” said Chris Larkin, managing director for trading at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley. Data released Monday showed U.S. durable-goods orders fell 4.5% in January, coming in below forecast. Excluding transportation, sales were up 0.7%. Read: Durable-goods orders sink 4.5% — but it’s all Boeing. Overall, report signals that the economy is still growing. U.S. pending home sales rose 8.1% in January, according to the monthly index released Monday by the National Association of Realtors, with sales rising for the second month in a row. Pending home sales last rose by this much in June 2020, fueled by pandemic buying. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast the pending home sales index to rise by 0.9%. Federal Reserve Gov. Phillip Jefferson on Monday said he doesn’t support raising the central bank’s 2% inflation target because it “would damage the central bank’s credibility.” The S&P 500 has lost 4% over the past three weeks as the monetary-policy-sensitive 2-year Treasury yield
TMU …