Stock Market Today: Dow Ends Losing Streak as Tech Sidesteps Larger Rate-Hike Bets

This post was originally published on this site

Investing.com — The Dow snapped a three-week losing streak Friday as technology sidestepped the ongoing chorus of hawkish Federal Reserve remarks that have pushed up the odds of a larger September rate hike and extended the melt-up in Treasury yields.

The S&P 500 rose 1.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%, or 377 points, the Nasdaq was up 2.1%.

Big tech and chip stocks combined to help push the broader tech sector more than 2% higher even as the latest remarks from Fed officials continued the trend of rising treasury yields, which is typically a drag on tech.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller called for “another significant increase in the policy rate,” later this month.

The remarks arrived just a day after chairman Jerome Powell vowed to persist with rate hikes “until the job [on reducing inflation] is done.”

The hawkish wave of remarks from Fed officials this week has pushed the odds of a 75-basis point rate hike to 91% from 57% the prior week, according to Investing.com’s Fed Rate Monitor Tool.

Energy also played a big role in the broader market melt-up helped by advancing oil prices following recent reports suggesting the Biden administration is mulling whether to stop releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve after October.

Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL), EOG Resources Inc (NYSE:EOG), and Baker Hughes Co (NASDAQ:BKR) led the gains in energy, with the latter up more than 5%.

The earnings front also provided ammunition for bullish bets on stocks as Docusign and Zscaler surged.

Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS) reported quarterly results that topped Wall Street estimates on both the top and bottom lines, sending its shares up more than 21%.

DocuSign (NASDAQ:DOCU), meanwhile, delivered a better-than-expected Q3 outlook after reporting second-quarter results that were ahead of estimates.

In other news, construction equipment maker Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) said it had reached a settlement to resolve a multiyear tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.