Wall Street little changed as investors assess inflation path

Wall Street little changed as investors assess inflation path

By Johann M Cherian, Sukriti Gupta and Carolina Mandl

Wed January 8, 2025 4:32 PM

The market became truly schizophrenic today with severe seesaw action as the indexes bounced back and forth between black and red several times, the Dow itself swinging back and forth between a -200 and +100 all day. The inciting incidents were two conflicting employment reports, one saying payrolls were down, the other saying new jobless claims were also down – so which one do you believe? The other conflict was Trump floating the idea of declaring a national emergency on inflation to enable him to order tariffs that, ironically, are widely feared to spark more inflation.  

The day ended mixed with tech closing flat though the Dow did enjoy a low 3-digit gain. Though the Fed minutes revealed expectations that price pressures will remain “sticky,” but at least Fed Governor Waller said he expects inflation to continue falling this year and more rate cuts would be coming. So today saw a lot of tug-of-war between good news and bad news with investors trying to find a direction. Volume remains considerably above the 12.3 billion average, coming in today at 15.8 billion. 

DJ: 42,528.36  -178.20      NAS: 19,489.68  -375.30       S&P: 5,909.03  -66.35         1/7

DJ: 42,635.20  +106.84     NAS: 19,478.88  -10.80         S&P: 5,918.25  +9.22          1/8

Wed 1-8-25 4:32 PM Wall Street little changed as investors assess inflation path | Reuters