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 higher in afternoon 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 3 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.7%.
Major indexes added to their gains after President Joe Biden announced a bipartisan infrastructure deal. The $953 billion plan is the culmination of months of talks on both sides of the aisle. Biden’s larger spending plan is still possible later this year.
Markets have calmed 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.
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