{"id":63968,"date":"2025-08-13T12:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T12:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/63968\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T12:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T12:43:10","slug":"wall-street-points-toward-new-highs-on-hopes-for-a-fed-rate-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/63968\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street points toward new highs on hopes for a Fed rate cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wall Street is pointed toward new heights before the opening bell Wednesday after new U.S. inflation data<\/a> raised hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its benchmark interest rate next month.<\/p>\n

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each ticked up 0.2%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at record highs on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The rally in markets, which is partly being driven by relief over an extended truce<\/a> in President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war with China, is being powered by new optimism that borrowing costs in the U.S. will fall. <\/p>\n

Lower rates would give a boost to investment prices and to the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow to buy houses<\/a>, cars or equipment. President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Fed\u2019s chair personally <\/a> while doing so. <\/p>\n

The Fed has hesitated,<\/a> worried that Trump\u2019s tariffs <\/a> could trigger another round of elevated inflation. <\/p>\n

The Fed will get one more report on inflation and another on the U.S. job market before its next meeting, which ends Sept. 17. The most recent jobs report was a stunner, coming in much weaker than economists expected<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Critics say the broad U.S. stock market is looking expensive after its surge from a bottom in April. That\u2019s putting pressure on companies to deliver continued growth in profit. <\/p>\n

Gildan Activewear announced Wednesday that it was buying HanesBrands for $2.2 billion<\/a> in a deal that will give HanesBrands shareholders close to 20% of the combined company. The deal, which was widely reported Tuesday ahead of the official announcement, will give Gildan access to brands including Hanes and Maidenform. <\/p>\n

HanesBrands shares fell more than 9% before the bell after climbing 28% on Tuesday when rumors of the deal surfaced.<\/p>\n

Cava slid 24% in off-hours trading after the Mediterranean restaurant chain posted weaker-than-forecast same store sales in the second quarter and cut some of its full-year guidance. Company executives pinned some of the lag in same store sales on the \u201choneymoon effect,\u201d when stores fail to sustain the huge demand they saw upon opening.<\/p>\n

In Asia, Tokyo\u2019s benchmark Nikkei 225 added to its record set a day earlier, finishing 1.3% higher at 43,274.67.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsia woke up in full risk-on mode, riding the coattails of a U.S. session that looked like someone hit the \u2018infinite bid\u2019 button after CPI didn\u2019t blow the inflation doors off,\u201d Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng surged 2.6% to 25,613.67, while the Shanghai Composite index added 0.5% to 3,683.46.<\/p>\n

In Japan, relief over the Trump administration\u2019s confirmation that its exports will face a flat 15% U.S. import duty has driven strong buying of computer chip-related companies and other exporters. <\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea\u2019s Kospi advanced 1.1% to 3,224.37. In Australia, the S&P\/ASX 200 shed 0.6% to 8,827.10. <\/p>\n

Taiwan\u2019s Taiex was up 0.9% and the Sensex in India gained 0.5%. In Bangkok, the SET climbed 1% after the Bank of Thailand cut its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 1.5%. <\/p>\n

In Europe at midday, Germany\u2019s DAX rose 0.9% and the CAC 40 in Paris picked up 0.6%. Britain\u2019s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% higher. <\/p>\n

In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil gave back 52 cents to $62.65 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 44 cents to $65.68 per barrel. <\/p>\n

The U.S. dollar dipped to 147.51 Japanese yen from 147.84 yen. The euro climbed to $1.1713 from $1.1677.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wall Street is pointed toward new heights before the opening bell Wednesday after new U.S. inflation data raised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5300,1487,84,891,33937,141,5299,5297,232,33939,33938,4338,1431,467,4542,5298,56,54,55,231],"class_list":["post-63968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-ap-top-news","tag-asia","tag-business","tag-china","tag-construction-partners","tag-donald-trump","tag-federal-reserve-system","tag-financial-markets","tag-general-news","tag-gildan-activewear","tag-hanesbrands","tag-inc","tag-inflation","tag-markets","tag-stephen-innes","tag-stocks-and-bonds","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}