Wall Street pivots toward gains before opening bell

By ELAINE KURTENBACH and MATT OTT
AP Business Writers

Wall Street appeared poised for a rebound Thursday during a week of mixed corporate earnings and continued anxiety over inflation.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials rose 0.6%, and the S&P 500 gained 0.7%.

Stocks pulled back Wednesday despite comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that an exceptionally strong U.S. jobs report last week would not oblige the central bank to return to a more aggressive stance on raising interest rates to tame inflation.

Another Fed official, John Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said Wednesday that he still thinks the Fed’s main interest rate hitting a target of 5% to 5.5% by the end of the year is “a very reasonable view.” The federal funds rate is now at a range of 4.50% to 4.75%. Williams spoke at a CFO Network summit hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

“Traders are keeping a close eye on policymakers’ remarks to position accordingly ahead of key upcoming inflation figures and job market data before next month’s rate decision,” Anderson Alves of ActivTrades said in a commentary.

The Fed has been saying that it plans to hike interest rates a couple more times and then hold them at a high level at least through the end of the year. Williams warned that interest rates may need to go higher if stock prices rally and bond yields fall too much, among other loosening financial conditions, because that could drive inflation higher.

Companies have so far been reporting relatively lackluster earnings for the last three months of 2022, as rising costs eat into their margins.

PepsiCo on Thursday topped sales expectations after it hiked prices to offset its rising costs.

Mattel tumbled more than 10% in after-hours trading after the toymaker reported a big sales decline in the all-important holiday quarter. The company’s revenue fell 22% from the same period a year ago, while net income slid to $16 million from $226 million the year before.

Walt Disney rose about 7% after it reported surprisingly good fiscal first-quarter financial results, but said it will cut about 7,000 jobs as part of a “significant transformation” announced by CEO Bob Iger. The job cuts amount to about 3% of the entertainment giant’s global workforce.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX added 1.3%, as did the CAC 40 in Paris. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.8% at midday.

In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.1% to 27,584.35 and the Kospi in Seoul fell 0.1% to 2,481.52. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.5% to 7,490.30. In Mumbai, the Sensex gained 0.2%. Shares fell in Bangkok, Taiwan and Singapore.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 1.6% to 21,624.36, while the Shanghai Composite index advanced 1.2% to 3,270.38.

In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 7 cents to $78.54 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It added $1.33 on Wednesday to $78.47.

Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, advanced 15 cents to $85.24 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar slipped to 130.94 Japanese yen from 131.42 yen. The euro rose to $1.0760 from $1.0714.

On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and the Nasdaq fell 1.7%. The Dow industrials gave back 0.6%.

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Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok; Ott reported from Silver Spring, Md.