Explore Business Standard
Stocks are drifting on Wall Street Friday after a report showed inflation is slowing, though not quite as much as hoped. The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower in morning trading after earlier shifting between very small gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 86 points, or 0.3%, at 33,695, as of 10:19 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower. Stocks around the world had earlier weakened after a U.S. government report showed prices getting paid at the wholesale level were 7.4% higher in November than a year earlier. That's a slowdown from October's rate of 8.1%, but it was nevertheless slightly worse than economists expected. The nation's high inflation, along with the Federal Reserve's economy-crunching response to it, have been the main reasons for Wall Street's painful tumble this year. Stocks have recovered some of their losses recently, as inflation has slowed since hitting a peak in the summer. But it remains painfully high, raising the risk that ...
Wall Street scored its biggest week since June as strong retail sales boosted the risk appetite of equity market investors, despite surging inflationary pressures on the US economy.The S & P 500, which groups the top 500 US stocks, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both rose about 2% each for the week while the broad-based Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1%.It was a second straight week of gains for the three indexes, putting a floor under a market that had a wobbly start for the fourth quarter as inflation from rallying commodity prices led to sharp swings in stocks since the start of October.Friday's run-up came after US retail sales numbers for September released by the Commerce Department showed a growth of nearly 14% on the year and a steady monthly expansion of 0.7% since August.Economists polled by US media had expected a monthly decline of 0.2% for September retail sales due to challenges from the coronavirus pandemic, especially inflation. But almost every key sector .