A currency trader watches monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Thursday after a listless day of trading on Wall Street as the recent bout of nerves over Federal Reserve policy fades.
A currency trader watches monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Thursday after a listless day of trading on Wall Street as the recent bout of nerves over Federal Reserve policy fades.
A currency trader watches monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Thursday after a listless day of trading on Wall Street as the recent bout of nerves over Federal Reserve policy fades.
A currency trader watches monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Shares were mostly higher in Asia on Thursday after a listless day of trading on Wall Street as the recent bout of nerves over Federal Reserve policy fades.
A woman passes an entrance of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. Stocks are opening higher on Wall Street, continuing an upturn this week that has brought the S&P 500 back to the record high level it reached a week and a half ago. The benchmark index was up 0.6% in the early going Thursday, June 24.
Stocks were moderately higher in morning trading Thursday, helped by some modestly positive economic data as well as a continued belief that the U.S. economy is recovering from the pandemic and that inflation, while higher than usual, will not be a long-term problem.
The S&P 500 index rose 0.6% as of 11 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8%.
Markets have calmed notably since the Federal Reserve surprised investors last week by saying it could start raising short-term interest rates by late 2023, earlier than expected, if recent high inflation persists.
The super-low rates the Fed engineered to carry the economy through the pandemic have propped up prices across markets, and any change would be a big deal, so the Fed’s announcement triggered selling of stocks and a rise in Treasury yields last week. However that selling reversed this week. The three major indexes are all up more than 2% this week and are once again near records.
Investors had little negative reaction to a report that showed that 411,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, down 7,000 from the week before. That was a much more modest decline than investors had expected, and the second week in a row where unemployment benefits claims stalled after declining steadily for months.
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