People walk along Wall Street in the financial district of Manhattan on September 29, 2021 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Stock futures gained on Thursday after another report pointed to cooling inflation.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 58 points, or 0.18%. S&P 500 futures added 0.27%, while Nasdaq-100 futures gained about 0.45%.
The March producer prices index, a measure of prices paid by companies and often a leading indicator of consumer inflation, declined by 0.5% month over month versus expectations for prices to be flat. Excluding food and energy, the core wholesale prices reading shed 0.1% month over month, much better than the 0.2% increase expected by economists polled by Dow Jones.
Wednesday’s release of March’s consumer price index report showed headline inflation pressures eased last month. The CPI advanced just 0.1% month over month in March. Consumer prices grew 5% on an annual basis, the smallest increase in nearly two years.
Some optimism about the upcoming earnings reporting season, which begins this week, also gave markets a boost Thursday morning. Delta Air Lines shares climbed 2% in the premarket after the airline issued upbeat second-quarter guidance, projecting “record advance bookings for the summer,” even as it reported a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter.
However, gains were still pretty muted as investors worry that a recession is on the horizon. Stocks ended Wednesday’s session on a down note. The S&P 500 closed 0.41% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.85%. The Dow snapped a four-day winning streak, ending the day down 38.29 points, or 0.11%.
Traders’ sentiment turned in the afternoon following the release of minutes from the March Federal Open Market Committee meeting. In particular, the Fed expects the recent banking crisis to cause a mild recession later this year.
“Wall Street went from focusing on a mostly cooler-than-expected inflation report to the Fed Minutes that prompted recession…
Read the full article here