Wall Street today: US stocks rise as Fed policymakers favour more rate cuts, Tesla jumps 4.8% | Stock Market News

US stocks rose on Monday as investors focused on comments from Federal Reserve policymakers and economic data due this week.

Fed presidents Raphael Bostic, Neel Kashkari and Austan Goolsbee supported the last week’s rate cut and voiced support for more cuts in the rest of 2024.

At 11:44 a.m. the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 40.40 points, or 0.10 per cent, to 42,103.76, the S&P 500 gained 18.37 points, or 0.32 per cent, to 5,720.92 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 54.95 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 18,003.27.

At the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.0 points, or 0.01 per cent, to 42060.4. The S&P 500 rose 9.3 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 5711.9, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 46.6 points, or 0.26 per cent, to 17994.905.

This week’s calendar includes the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index for August, consumer confidence report, and Comments from a number of Fed policymakers including Chair Jerome Powell.

A preliminary report from S&P Global on Monday showed US manufacturing activity fell more severely in September than in August and hit a 15-month low.

Among the largecap stocks, Tesla jumped 4.8 per cent, Meta Platforms rose 1.2 per cent, while Apple lost 0.5 per cent.

Intel shares gained 2.1 per cent amid reports of Apollo’s offer to invest as much as $5 billion in the chipmaker and Qualcomm showed interest in buying parts or all of the company. Qualcomm stock was flat.

General Motors shed 3.2 per cent after Bernstein downgraded the automaker’s stock to “market perform” from “outperform”.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.77 per cent from 3.74 per cent late on Friday. The yield on the 2-year Treasury edged up to 3.61 per cent from 3.60 per cent.

Bullion

Gold prices were steady on Monday after hitting a record high.

Spot gold was unchanged at $2,620.79 by 1222 GMT, after hitting an all-time high of $2,631.31 earlier in the session.

Spot silver fell 1.4 per cent to $30.68 per ounce.

Crude oil

Oil prices were little changed on Monday after last week’s cut in US interest rates.

Brent crude futures for November were down by 6 cents, or 0.1 per cent, to $74.43 a barrel by 1253 GMT.

US crude futures for November were up 4 cents, or 0.1 per cent, at $71.04.