One way companies can make their stock prices look less expensive is to deliver strong growth in profits, and Brinker International rose 1.6 per cent after becoming the latest to report stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company behind the Chili’s brand said it saw more customers coming to its restaurants, and it’s also making more profit off each $1 in sales.

“Chili’s is officially back, baby back!” CEO Kevin Hochman said.

HanesBrands climbed 3.7 per cent after it agreed to sell itself to Gildan Activewear for $2.2 billion in cash and Gildan stock. The deal would combine North Carolinas’ HanesBrands with Canada’s Gildan, and Gildan’s stock that trades in the United States rose 11.8 per cent.

Bullish soared in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange and rose 83.8 per cent in its first day of trading. The cryptocurrency exchange’s CEO is Tom Farley, who used to be president of the NYSE Group.

On the losing end of Wall Street were grocery stores and delivery companies, which fell after Amazon said it will offer fresh groceries to customers in more than 1000 cities and towns through same-day delivery. Kroger fell 4.4 per cent, and DoorDash dropped 3.8 per cent, while Amazon rose 1.4 per cent.

Cava Group sank 16.6 per cent after the Mediterranean restaurant chain reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its profit topped forecasts. It also cut its 2025 forecast for an important underlying measure of restaurant sales.

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CoreWeave lost 20.8 per cent after the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running artificial-intelligence workloads, reported a larger loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 20.82 points to 6,466.58. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 463.66 to 44,922.27, and the Nasdaq composite added 31.24 to 21,713.14.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased as expectations built for coming cuts to interest rates by the Fed.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.23 per cent from 4.29 per cent late Tuesday and from 4.50 per cent in mid-July. That’s a notable move for the bond market.

President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Fed’s chair personally while doing so.

But the Fed has been hesitant so far because of the possibility that Trump’s tariffs could make inflation much worse. Lowering rates would give inflation more fuel, potentially adding oxygen to a growing fire. That’s why Fed officials have said they wanted to see more data come in about inflation before moving.

On Thursday, a report will show how bad inflation was at the wholesale level across the United States. Economists expect it to show inflation accelerated a touch to 2.4 per cent in July from 2.3 per cent in June.

AP