{"id":436078,"date":"2025-12-09T17:44:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T17:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436078\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T17:44:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T17:44:46","slug":"wall-street-drifts-near-its-record-high-as-exxon-mobil-climbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436078\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street drifts near its record high as Exxon Mobil climbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 U.S. stocks are drifting on Tuesday as Wall Street waits to hear what\u00a0the Federal Reserve will say<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday about where interest rates are heading.<\/p>\n

The S&P 500 rose 0.2%, coming off just its\u00a0second loss in the last 11 days<\/a>, and pulled closer to its all-time high set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 139 points, or 0.3%, as of 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.<\/p>\n

Exxon Mobil was one of the strongest forces lifting the market. It climbed 3.4% after increasing its forecast for profit over the next five years, thanks in part to strength for its fields in the Permian basin in the United States and off Guyana\u2019s shore.<\/p>\n

CVS Health rose 2.7% after unveiling new financial forecasts, including expectations for annual compounded growth in earnings per share at a \u201cmid-teens\u201d percentage over the next three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are committed to doing what we say,\u201d said Chief Financial Officer Brian Newman, who also said CVS Health is closing out 2025 with strong momentum.<\/p>\n

They helped work against a 1.5% fall for homebuilder Toll Brothers and a 6.7% drop for AutoZone, which both reported weaker results for the latest quarter than analysts expected.<\/p>\n

Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley Jr. said demand for new homes remains soft across many markets. But he pointed to how his company\u2019s luxury homes aim more at affluent customers, who may be less hurt by \u201caffordability pressures\u201d than other potential homebuyers.<\/p>\n

One big factor in that affordability question is\u00a0mortgage rates<\/a>. They\u2019re cheaper than they were at the start of the year, but they perked up a bit after October. That\u2019s largely because of questions in the bond market about how much more the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate.<\/p>\n

The widespread expectation is that the Fed will cut interest rates Wednesday afternoon, which would be the third such easing of the year. Lower interest rates can give the economy and prices for investments a boost, but the downside is they can worsen inflation.<\/p>\n

The U.S. stock market has run to the edge of its records in part because of the near assumption that the Fed will cut rates again on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The big question is what the Fed will say about where interest rates will go after that. Many on Wall Street are bracing for talk aimed at tamping down expectations for more cuts in 2026.<\/p>\n

Inflation has stubbornly remained<\/a>\u00a0above the Fed\u2019s 2% target, and\u00a0Fed officials are notably split<\/a>\u00a0in their opinions about whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger threat to the economy.<\/p>\n

Treasury yields climbed in the bond market after a report on Tuesday showed that U.S. employers were advertising 7.7 million job openings at the end of October. That\u2019s up a smidgen from the month before and the highest since May.<\/p>\n

If the job market is not worsening, it may not need as much help from the Fed through more cuts to rates.<\/p>\n

After the report on job openings came out, the yield on the 10-year Treasury erased what had been an earlier dip and was sitting at 4.17%, where it was late Monday.<\/p>\n

The yield on the two-year Treasury, which moves more closely with expectations for what the Fed will do, rose to 3.60% from 3.57% late Monday.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Ares Management climbed 7.7% after S&P Dow Jones Indices said the investment company will join its widely followed S&P 500 index. It will replace Kellanova, the maker of Pringles and Pop-Tarts, which is being bought by Mars, the company behind Snickers and M&Ms.<\/p>\n

Home Depot edged down by 0.1% after flipping earlier between gains and losses. It gave a preliminary forecast for 2026 that said the broad home improvement market may shrink by up to 1%. But it also gave a separate set of forecasts saying its earnings per share could grow in the mid- to high-single digit percentages if the housing market recovers.<\/p>\n

The market\u2019s most influential stock,\u00a0Nvidia<\/a>, slipped 0.6% after President Donald\u00a0Trump allowed it to sell<\/a>\u00a0an advanced chip used in\u00a0artificial-intelligence<\/a>\u00a0technology to \u201capproved customers\u201d in China. The H200 is not Nvidia\u2019s top product.<\/p>\n

In stock markets abroad, indexes weakened across much of Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

Indexes fell 1.3% in Hong Kong and 0.6% in Paris for two of the world\u2019s bigger moves.<\/p>\n

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 U.S. stocks are drifting on Tuesday as Wall…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":436079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,92013,17709,405,403,42135,5226,5225,5228,5227,2274,10747,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,3642],"class_list":{"0":"post-436078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-federal-reserve-interest-rate-decision","10":"tag-nasdaq","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-stock-exchange","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-sp-500","19":"tag-stock-market-today","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-wall-street"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115690859651953330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}