Wall Street Mixed as Investors Digest Strong US Data, Hawkish Fed Rhetoric

Mixed trading on Wall Street as investors weigh positive US data and hawkish Fedspeak

Major US stock indexes were neutral on Thursday amid choppy trading as investors digested Wednesday's FOMC minutes release that were not as aggressive as anticipated while still keeping an eye on solid US data and hawkish comments from Fed governors. The S&P 500 index was last trading 0.2% higher in the 4,280 region, while the Dow was down about 0.1% just under 34,000 and the Nasdaq 100 was up about 0.4% just over 13,500.

Weekly unemployment claims data indicated that the US labor market is in in good shape, and the August Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing survey was considerably higher than anticipated, allaying worries that the US economy is in recession. In contrast, hawkish Fed policymaker Ester George continued to sound quite worried about the future for US inflation while hawkish Fed policymaker James Bullard advocated for a 75 bps rate rise next month and rates approaching 4.0% by the end of the year.

In a much more subdued tone, Fed's Mary Daly predicted that rates would only slightly increase next year and reach to just beyond 3.0% by the end of the year. In recent weeks, stocks have risen on expectations that US inflation has peaked, that the US economy will avoid entering a recession, and that the Fed won't need to raise rates aggressively in order to bring inflation down to its objective of 2.0%.

Energy performs better when oil prices increase.

Energy was the best-performing sector of the S&P 500 GICS on Thursday, rising almost 2.5% on a rise in oil prices.

Exxon Mobil's most recent gain was 2.5%. With a rise of slightly over 0.5%, information technology was the second-best performer. Healthcare had the lowest performance, losing about 1%.

The day was good for semiconductor stock prices. At the time of last trade, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) was over 3.0% higher thanks to strong gains from companies including Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Broadcom.

Kohl's fell roughly 7.0% after the firm lowered its top and bottom-line profits projection for the remainder of this year, putting retail stocks back in the spotlight. Home Depot and Walmart both had a minor decline in sympathy after reporting profits that exceeded expectations earlier in the week.