Wall Street Today | Fed's Hawks Make a Pitch Against a Rate-Hike Pause

U.S. inflation does not look like it is cooling fast enough to allow the Fed to hit pause on the interest-rate hike campaign it began more than a year ago, two Fed policymakers said on Thursday.

The remarks, from Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Lorie Logan and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, appear to represent a minority hawkish view at the Fed, but one that has gained ground in the runup to the Fed's next meeting, on June 13-14.

Stuck in a 3.8% range since March, The S&P 500 is on course for the calmest quarter since 1993. Thanks to that backdrop of peace, indexes tracking strategies of writing bullish and bearish options are notching their best stretches of weekly wins in at least one year.

That success will be challenged Friday as piles of options reach maturity. About $1.7 trillion of derivatives contracts tied to stocks and indexes are scheduled to expire, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. strategist John Marshall.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday he is optimistic that congressional negotiators could reach a deal to raise or suspend the debt ceiling in time to hold a House vote on it next week.

U.S. existing home sales, which make up most of the housing market, fell 3.4% in April from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.28 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

The national median existing-home price fell 1.7% in April from a year earlier to $388,800, the biggest year-over-year price decline since January 2012, NAR said.

OpenAI launched a ChatGPT iPhone app on Thursday, its CTO Mira Murati said on Twitter. An Android version is coming soon, she said.

The social networking giant disclosed its internal silicon chip projects for the first time to reporters earlier this week, ahead of a virtual event Thursday discussing its AI technical infrastructure investments.