Stocks are wavering Thursday following some unnerving profit forecasts from Walmart and Cisco Systems, but they’re holding onto most of their big gains for November as Wall Street’s hopes for a “Goldilocks” economy that’s just right for markets keep rising.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged in afternoon trading and it remains comfortably on its way to a third straight winning week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 101 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:45 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.
Walmart dropped 7.3% after it warned that shoppers began pulling back on spending late last month. It also gave a forecast for upcoming holiday profit that was weaker than analysts expected. The nation’s largest retailer’s stock fell even though it reported results for the latest quarter that edged past Wall Street’s expectations.
Cisco tumbled 11.6% even though it also reported stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts estimated. The company saw a slowdown of new product orders last quarter, and it gave forecasts for earnings this upcoming quarter and fiscal year that were weaker than analysts expected.
Stocks in the oil-and-gas industry were also particularly weak after the price of crude tumbled to its lowest level since July. ConocoPhillips dropped 3.8%, and Chevron fell 2%.
Several more reports on Thursday indicated the economy is slowing. While the weaker-than-expected data are of course a signal the economy may be losing some of its strong momentum, for investors, they just as importantly show that upward pressures on inflation may be easing.
The Fed has been trying to shepherd the economy along a tightrope, to slow enough to stamp out high inflation without falling into a recession. Thursday’s weaker-than-expected reports strengthened investors’ hopes that the Fed can go easier on interest rates, which triggered an immediate drop in Treasury yields.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.45% from 4.54% late Wednesday. Just last month, it was above 5% at its highest level since 2007 and raising worries on Wall Street as it undercut prices for stocks and other investments.
On the winning side of Wall Street was Macy’s, which jumped 5.5% after delivering a surprising profit for the latest quarter.
Some economists and analysts are warning investors that they’ve become overzealous in predicting when the Fed could begin cutting rates. Even if the Fed is done hiking its main interest rate, officials at the central bank have said they’ll likely keep it high for a while to ensure inflation is truly stamped out. The federal funds rate is above 5.25% and at its highest level since 2001.
But investors have been paying more attention to recent data reports showing a slowdown in the economy. On Thursday, one said that slightly more workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. The number is still low relative to history, but a softening in the job market could prevent the too-strong raises in workers’ pay that the Fed fears could trigger a vicious cycle that keeps inflation high.
Separate reports said that manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region is unexpectedly weakening, while U.S. industrial production weakened more than expected in October.
A slowing economy would also mean softer growth in demand for fuel, and worries are already high about swelling inventories for crude oil. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude tumbled 4.9% to $72.87. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 4.7% to $77.39 per barrel.
Strategists at Barclays expect global economic growth to slow in 2024 before recovering in 2025, as inflation falls further.
That’s still a “benign bottom for a business cycle,” Ajay Rajadhyaksha and other analysts wrote in a report, and they expect the U.S. unemployment rate to top out at 4.3%, well below where it has in past recessions.
In stock markets abroad, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3% after Japan reported that its exports rose a meager 1.6% in October, down from September’s growth.
Indexes were mixed across the rest of Asia and Europe.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
