Wall Street climbs as some beaten-down banks recover
Stocks ended broadly higher on Wall Street Tuesday, as some breathtaking moves from a manic Monday reversed course.
The S&P 500 rose 1.7% after a report showed inflation is still high but heading lower. Stocks of smaller and mid-sized banks recovered some of their prior plunges caused by worries that customers could yank out all their cash. Treasury yields soared to trim their historic drops.
Traders rushed Monday to place some bets that the Federal Reserve could decide to keep rates steady at its next meeting, instead of accelerating to a hike of 0.50 percentage points as they thought a week ago.
Tuesday’s report showed that inflation at the consumer level was 6% in February, versus a year before. That matched economists’ expectations and was a slowdown from January’s 6.4% inflation rate, but it’s still way above the Fed’s target.
Following the inflation data, bets are largely falling on the Fed doing an increase of 0.25 points later this month, according to data from CME Group. The trouble for the Fed is that it’s also facing a banking system that may already be cracking due to all of its rate increases from the last year. The second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history have both come since Friday.
“The Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments.
Biden plans to deliver Carter eulogy
ATLANTA — President Joe Biden says he plans to deliver the eulogy at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, who remains under hospice care. Biden told donors at a California fundraiser Monday evening about his “recent” visit to see the 39th president. “He asked me to do his eulogy,” Biden said. “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that.”
No retrial in L.A. for Weinstein
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles prosecutors told a judge Tuesday that they will not retry Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of the rape and sexual assault of one woman, on counts involving two others that left jurors deadlocked.