The Wall Street stocks closed with mixed results on Friday as investors await the quarterly results of Nvidia next week, and feared that the Federal Reserve could skip reducing U. S. interest rates in December.
The market also partially recuperated following a selloff at the beginning of the session, which plummeted all three major Wall Street indexes by over 1 percent.
In recent days, investors have been concerned about the rate cut and the full valuation of the heavyweight artificial intelligence stocks that have been the main source of the U.S. stock market’s returns in recent years. Therefore, Nvidia, Palantir, Microsoft, and Tesla all benefited.
As the assumption of the Fed reducing rates by the upcoming policy meeting in December has dwindled in recent days, inflation persists, partly due to global tariffs that have been implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The CME Group FedWatch tool indicated that the chance of a 25-basis-point rate reduction in December had decreased to less than 50 percent from 67 percent last week.
Kansas City Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Schmid said on Friday that his worries about excessive inflation are “too hot” and the impact of tariffs on a narrower level, indicating that he might dissent once more at the next Fed meeting in December in the event that the policymakers decide to reduce short-term interest rates.
He was among the two who voted against the Fed decision to reduce the policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point in October.
Nvidia, an AI chipmaker, will be in the limelight of Wall Street when it reports its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, where investors are seeking new signs that the race to dominate the budding technology is not becoming exhaustive.
Head of Research and Quantitative Strategies of Horizon Investments in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mike Dickson, said, “We’ve got a huge event next week with Nvidia. If Nvidia disappoints, they will be punished. But I also think that – kind of like you’re seeing today – you’ll see dip buyers come back in pretty quickly and stabilize things.”
The preliminary data indicated that the S&P 500 lost 2.70 points, or 0.05 percent, to end at 6,734.42 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 29.17 points, or 0.13 percent, to 22,899.53. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 308.29 points, or 0.65 percent, to 47,148.93.
Investors have been burdened by concerns regarding the health of the labor market and the inflation outlook, even after the longest U.S. government shutdown in history was curtailed on Thursday.
The Swiss government announced that it will cut U.S. tariffs on Swiss goods to 15 percent, instead of 39 percent, in international trade.
Warner Bros Discovery benefited when the entertainment company announced that it had changed the employment contract of its CEO, David Zaslav, during a business strategic review.
Cidara Therapeutics has doubled its shares upon Merck declaring its intention to buy the firm in a deal worth close to $9.2 billion.
