Wall Street Today | S&P500, Nasdaq Hit Winning Streak on Tech

U.S. stocks traded higher Tuesday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite aiming for their longest winning streaks in two years, led by technology stocks. Oil prices retreated, and investors weighed the myriad comments of Federal Reserve officials.

Reuters reported that Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman on Tuesday repeated her view that the U.S. central bank would likely need to raise short-term interest rates again.

"I remain willing to support raising the federal funds rate at a future meeting should the incoming data indicate that progress on inflation has stalled or is insufficient to bring inflation to 2% in a timely way," Bowman said in remarks prepared for delivery to a meeting of the Ohio Bankers League.

The 10-year Treasury yield has fallen since then, but at around 4.58%, it remains about 75 basis points higher than in late July when the Fed last raised the policy rate. Fed governor Waller meanwhile said that in Central Banking terms, that movement up In 10 years has been an "earthquake." The policymakers are mulling what drove long-term yields higher.

Seeking Alpha reported that Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan expects financial conditions to remain tight.

"Inflation remains too high...The question for me is whether financial conditions are sufficiently restrictive" to achieve sustainable progress in reaching the Federal Reserve's goal of 2%, Logan said at a conference on Tuesday.

"It still looks like we're trending to 3% instead of 2%," she noted. As a result, "I think we're going to continue to see tight financial conditions" to bring inflation down.

West Texas Intermediate slid 4.3% to settle near $77 a barrel, the lowest since July 21. The declines deepened in the afternoon after WTI dipped below its 200-day moving average, a sign of longer-term weakness that often spurs additional selling.

The dollar strengthened — potentially hurting oil demand by making the commodity more expensive for importers — after Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said it’s too soon to declare victory over inflation. He also said the risk of over-tightening monetary policy is preferable to doing too little and that he’s concerned that inflation could tick up again.

Meanwhile, trade data from China, the world’s largest crude importer, showed a precarious economic recovery as overseas shipments missed expectations, dropping 6.4%, while imports increased by 3% from a year earlier last month. On the supply side, Russia is shipping crude near the highest rates in more than four months, and the Israel-Hamas war has yet to disrupt flows from the Middle East as it enters its second month.