Stock Market Today: Wall Street Is Higher Despite Concerns About Longer-Term Higher Interest Rates | National News

Wall Street was poised to open with gains on Wednesday as markets juggled more hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials and another flurry of corporate earnings.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose a little more than 0.2% before trading began.

United Airlines rose 5.3% in premarket trading after the airline posted a much narrower loss than analysts expected. United lost $124 million in the first quarter, blamed on a three-week grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 9s after a panel on an Alaska Airlines Max plane was blown off in January. United said the gaming ban cost the company $200 million – enough to turn a small profit into a loss for the quarter.

Shares of JB Hunt fell more than 7% after the trucking company's first-quarter profit fell well short of expectations and revenue fell 9% from the same period last year.

Tesla recouped a small portion of its losses in recent days, rising less than 1% to $158.46 per share in premarket trading. In a filing with regulators early Wednesday, the electric car maker said it is asking shareholders to reinstate a compensation package for CEO Elon Musk worth potentially $55 billion that was rejected by a Delaware judge this year. The company also plans to relocate its headquarters from Delaware to Texas.

U.S. markets closed lower on Tuesday after opening with gains for a second straight day as the reality increasingly emerges that interest rates may remain high for longer than previously thought.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at an event on Tuesday that the central bank waited to cut its key interest rate, which is at its highest level since 2001, because it first needed more confidence that inflation would be sustained fall to their 2 percent target.

Treasury yields rose immediately after Powell's comments. They were already higher after the Fed's vice chairman made similar comments earlier in the day. High interest rates and bond yields are weighing on prices for all types of investments.

“Risk appetite remains weak as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirms a later timetable for rate cuts, while a number of Fed speakers call for more patience on easing,” said Yeap Jun Rong, market analyst at IG.

Powell suggested that the Fed will keep interest rates stable “for as long as necessary” if higher inflation persists. But he also acknowledged that the Fed could cut interest rates if the labor market unexpectedly weakens.

“Recent data clearly has not given us greater confidence and instead suggests that it will likely take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” Powell said, pointing to a series of reports this year that showed that Inflation remained higher than forecast.

Traders are largely betting on the Fed making just one or two rate cuts this year, after expecting six or more rate cuts by 2024.

Later on Wednesday, President Joe Biden is expected to call for a tripling of tariffs on steel from China to protect American producers from a flood of cheap imports. The announcement comes in an address to steelworkers in the embattled state of Pennsylvania.

In Europe, France's CAC 40 was up 1.3% at midday, while Germany's DAX was up 0.5%.

Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.7% after a report showed that U.K. inflation fell to its lowest level in two and a half years in March. Some analysts believe this could pave the way for a rate cut soon.

In Asia, Japan's leading index Nikkei 225 fell 1.3% to close at 37,961.80. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell almost 0.1% to 7,605.60. South Korea's Kospi fell almost 1.0% to 2,584.18. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was little changed, rising to 16,251.84, while the Shanghai Composite rose 2.1% to 3,071.38.

In energy trading, U.S. crude oil prices fell 44 cents to $84.92 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 49 cents to $89.53 a barrel.

In foreign exchange trading, the US dollar rose to 154.67 Japanese yen from 154.65 yen. The euro was at $1.0641, up from $1.0617.

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