Stocks were up across the board on Thursday with leading technology markets higher and Ether (ETH-USD) crossing $2,000 for the first time this year ahead of highly anticipated bank earnings on Friday.
As the closing bell rang Thursday, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was up 1.33%, the The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 1.14%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained 1.99%.
The small-cap Russell 2000 also rose more than 1.3%, while gold prices rose 1.4% to trade as high as $2,050 an ounce.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) gained 1.3% to trade back above $30,000 alongside Ethereum’s rally to fresh 2023 highs.
Thursday’s rally in ethereum was attributed to the successful launch of another upgrade to the ethereum blockchain. Crypto-exposed stocks including Coinbase (COIN), Block (SQ) and MicroStrategy (MSTR) were all up on Thursday.
The March producer price reading released Thursday morning also showed some further easing in inflation pressures last month, news that investors took as a potential sign that the Federal Reserve may be closer to wrapping up its campaign. rate hike sooner than expected.
Producer prices fell 0.5% in March and rose just 2.7% from a year earlier. The BLS said in its statement that two-thirds of the drop in producer prices was attributed to a 1% decline in commodity prices, largely driven by falling gas prices last month. On a “core” basis, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, producer prices rose 0.1% last month.
Labor market data released Thursday morning also suggested the labor market continues to weaken, with a total of 239,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending April 8, the highest since January 2022, according to the latest government data.
“Initial jobless claims rose last week, but the job market remained tight. We expect claims to rise through the rest of the year and peak in the fourth quarter as the economy begins to emerge from a mild recession. Oren Klachkin, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. “The next labor market downturn will be modest, as the drop in demand will be quite modest and the workforce will remain relatively small.”
On the earnings side, investors are bracing for the spate of bank earnings on Friday morning with JPMorgan (JPM), Citi (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) expected to report results.
Delta Air Lines’ (DAL) quarterly results served as the corporate highlight early Thursday, and these results showed the company missed Wall Street expectations on both the top and bottom results. Delta shares fell 1.1% on the session.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian told Yahoo Finance on Thursday that “given all the uncertainty and some of the volatility that we see and what is seasonally our weakest quarter of the year, we’re pretty pleased and we think it was a really good performance.” solid”.
Stocks fell on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting showed some officials had forecast the economy would enter a recession later in 2023.
“For some time, the staff forecast for the US economy had presented subdued real GDP growth this year and some weakness in the labor market,” the minutes read.
“Given their assessment of the potential economic effects of recent developments in the banking sector, the staff projection at the time of the March meeting included a mild recession beginning at the end of this year, with a recovery over the next two years.” .
However, the minutes ultimately revealed that Fed officials were largely convinced the banking system would remain stable after several banks failed last month, likely keeping the central bank on track to raise interest rates. again next month.
“The March FOMC minutes show that two weeks after the SVB bankruptcy, policymakers were still more concerned, on net, about the risk of upside inflation than the risk of a much steeper slowdown in activity from what they previously expected,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon. Macroeconomics, in a note to clients on Wednesday.
“We doubt that this stance will survive contact with incoming data for the next two months.”
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