Stock market today: Wall Street in retreat early in the midst of a record-setting run

By MATT OTT
AP Business Writer

Wall Street pointed lower before the opening bell Wednesday after another record-setting day for U.S. markets.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials each slipped about 0.2% before the bell.

FedEx tumbled 11% in off-hours trading after it missed Wall Street’s second-quarter sales and profit forecasts. The package delivery company said it expects a single-digit decline in revenue this fiscal year, suggesting an industry-wide slowdown. Shares of rival UPS dipped 3% before the bell as well.

General Mills slid about 4% after it missed second-quarter sales targets from industry analysts and the and the packaged food company softened its outlook for the full year citing a “more cautious consumer economic outlook.”

Later on Wednesday The Conference Board, a business research group will post new data on consumer confidence and on Friday the U.S. releases consumer spending numbers for November. In that report is a measure of inflation that’s closely watched by the Federal Reserve, which has recently dialed down its aggressive fight against inflation that included a series of interest rate hikes.

With inflation down from its peak two summers ago and the economy still growing, the Fed has opted not to raise rates at its last three meetings and four of the past five, giving markets hope that rate cuts are on the horizon in 2024. The S&P 500 has rallied more than 15% since late October on that optimism.

The hope is the Fed can pull off what was earlier seen as a nearly impossible tightrope walk, by first getting inflation under control through high interest rates and then cutting rates before they push the economy into a recession.

Some Fed officials have been sounding more cautious about the prospect for rate cuts. On Friday, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said it was “premature to be even thinking” about whether to cut rates in March.

Elsewhere, data showed that U.K. inflation in November unexpectedly decelerated to 3.9% from October’s 4.6%, reaching its lowest level since 2021. The cooler reading boosted UK stocks, with the FTSE 100 up 0.6% at midday.

Germany’s DAX ticked down 0.2% the CAC 40 in Paris was essentially unchanged.

Building on gains from Tuesday, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 1.5% to reach 33,675.94 despite Japan experiencing a slight decline in its export performance for the first time in three months in November, a worrisome slowdown for the world’s third-largest economy.

Exports to China, Japan’s biggest single market, fell 2.2%, while shipments to the U.S. rose 5.3% from a year earlier. Total imports fell nearly 12%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.4% to 16,580.00 while the Shanghai Composite index lost 1% to 2,902.11 after China kept its benchmark lending rates unchanged at the monthly fixing on Wednesday.

The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney gained 0.7% to 7,537.90, while South Korea’s Kospi was 1.8% higher to 2,614.30. Bangkok’s SET rose 0.5%, while India’s Sensex dropped 0.6%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 3.88% from 3.93% late Tuesday. It was above 5% in October, at its highest level since 2007 and putting tremendous downward pressure on the stock market.

In other dealings, U.S. benchmark crude oil added 96 cents to $74.90 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 88 cents to $80.11 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar retreated to 143.55 Japanese yen from 143.82 yen. The euro fell to $1.0945 from $1.0980.

On Wall Street Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% to 4,768.37, just 0.6% shy of its record set nearly two years ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7% to 37,557.92, setting a record for a fifth straight day, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7% to 15,003.22.

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