The First Slice for Thursday, March 14, 2024

On Wednesday, the U.S. stock market had a bit of a rollercoaster ride, showing mixed results as investors were busy processing a bunch of economic signals and corporate earnings.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up by 37.83 points, or 0.1%.
The S&P 500 ended down by 9.96 points, or 0.2%.
The Nasdaq Composite finished down by 87.87 points, or 0.5%.

First up, the S&P 500, a key stock market index, couldn’t keep up its winning streak and didn’t hit another record high. Why? Well, investors were chewing over a report that showed consumer prices in February were stickier (meaning they didn’t drop as much as expected). This report is super important because it gives clues about inflation – basically, how prices for stuff we buy are changing.

Now, everyone’s eyes are on the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. They’re the ones who decide on interest rates, which affect everything from how much it costs to borrow money to how well the stock market does. There’s chatter that the Fed might cut interest rates by a small amount (25 basis points) in June. Guy LeBas, a big-shot strategist, thinks inflation is slowly heading back to the Fed’s target of 2%, but it’s not quite there yet.

Jerome Powell, the head honcho at the Fed, hinted last week that rate cuts are still possible in 2024. The Fed’s projections, which are like their best guesses on where things are headed, suggest they might cut rates three times by the end of 2024. We’ll get more updates on this next Wednesday.

In the tech world, stocks took a little step back after a strong performance the day before. Nvidia, a company that makes chips for AI, saw its stock jump over 7% on Tuesday but then dropped a bit on Wednesday. This kind of up-and-down is pretty common and often happens when investors decide to cash in on their gains.

Before the market opened, some big companies like Dollar Tree and Petco shared their earnings, and a few others like UiPath and Lennar were set to report after the market closed. These reports help investors figure out how companies are doing and where the economy might be headed………[read more]

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