Wall Street Today | Fed Officials Say Rates Close to Peak, More Increases Possible

Two Federal Reserve officials signaled policymakers may be close to being done with interest-rate increases, but one of them held back from ruling out further hikes until inflation is more clearly on a downward path.

“We may need additional increments, and we may be very near a place where we can hold for a substantial amount of time,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins said Thursday.

“We are in a restrictive stance. I’m in the camp of ‘let the restrictive stance work for a while, let’s just let this play out for a while, and that should bring inflation down’,” Harker, a voting member on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said.

Strong economic data sent mortgage rates this week to their highest level since 2001 — a jump that will continue to keep many prospective home buyers out of the market.

Initial claims decreased by 10,000 to 230,000 in the week ended Aug. 19, according to Labor Department data out Thursday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 240,000 applications.

An abstract interest-rate metric is dominating discussions across trading desks ahead of the Jackson Hole symposium, with investors wondering if Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will weigh in, and bracing for further declines in US Treasuries if he does.

After a skittish summer for US stocks, some retail investors are throwing in the towel, while many of their institutional counterparts view the recent slump as a chance to purchase shares.

The American Association of Individual Investors’ closely-watched survey on retail sentiment showed bears outnumbering bulls for the first time since June, reflecting a spread of -3.6 in the week ending August 24. Retail optimism had hit the highest since April 2021 last month, just before this month’s churn.

Oil edged higher after struggling for direction throughout the session as traders weighed increased supplies and a shaky economic outlook.

West Texas Intermediate futures settled little changed near $79. With open interest hovering near January lows, prices saw exacerbated moves that largely tracked the path of equity markets.

The US Oil Fund ETF reported its biggest daily outflow since 2020 on Wednesday, with more than $180 million being pulled from one of the oil market’s largest exchange-traded products.

The key for the Softbank-backed company is convincing investors that its vision to be a player in AI can drive growth after sales stagnated with the semiconductor industry working through a glut of chips.

The discount retailer reported second-quarter earnings of 91 cents a share on revenue of $7.32 billion for the second quarter, which ended July 29. This beat estimates by analysts tracked by FactSet, who were looking for profit of 87 cents a share on revenue of $7.2 billion.