S&P 500 ekes out all-time closing high as Fed minutes eyed

S&P 500 ekes out all-time closing high as Fed minutes eyed

By Stephen Culp

Tue February 18, 2025 5:01 PM

There’s a whole lot going on this week with all the indexes up and down quite a lot, the Dow down over 200 as late as 2:30 pm, but then all three closing near break-even as “wait-and-see” became the theme of the day. The Fed minutes come out on Wednesday but the Fed today has reiterated its position of keeping rates steady. Retails sales comes later in the week. Q4 is in its final stretch with 383 companies reporting and 74% of them beating estimates.  

Q4 earnings growth is forecasted at 15.3% vs the January forecast of just 9.6%. But the biggest deal will be tomorrow’s Fed report and the retail data which, as always, will be heavily scrutinized for clues on the forward path on rates and inflation. But for a “wait-and-see” day, volume was heavy coming in at 16.36 billion vs the average of 15.57 billion.  

DJ: 44,546.08  -165.35      NAS: 20,026.77  +81.13      S&P: 6,114.63  -0.44           2/14

DJ: 44,556.34  +10.26       NAS: 20,041.26  +14.49      S&P: 6,129.58  +14.95        2/18

Tue 2-18-25 5:01 pm S&P 500 ekes out all-time closing high as Fed minutes eyed | Reuters