S&P 500 ends up slightly as tech dips, inflation cools
By Sinéad Carew and Twesha
Dikshit
Fri February 13, 2026 6:48 AM
Wednesday’s strong jobs report brought the market down due to pessimism over rate cuts. Today’s CPI data showed prices increasing less than expected with inflation at least holding and perhaps even finally seeing some daylight in terms of tariff impact. This sparked renewed optimism that there might be a rate cut, prompting the oddsmakers to slightly push the June cut from 48.9% to 52.3%. Everything was going great until about 1 pm, the Dow being up some 300 points, but then all three indexes began a steady decline which led to the loss of most gains with all indexes closing modestly with the Nasdaq a little in red, the others a little in the black.
The news was positive but it had to be noted that we are still a good way from the Fed’s 2% goal. But sentiment says that the inflation trajectory is heading down and expected to continue on that path. The fly in the ointment now is the coming change in Fed leadership which today’s expert pointed out that when this happens in midterm, historically the market is hit with a “double-digit air pocket every time that’s occurred.” With the flight from AI persisting, it makes sense that the biggest boosts came from the defensive sectors – utilities, real estate and healthcare. Volume was 18.6 billion, finally below the 20.7 average.
DJ: 49,451.98 -669.42 NAS: 22,597.15
-469.32 S&P: 6,832.76
-108.71 2/12
DJ: 49,500.93 +48.95 NAS: 22,546.67
-50.48 S&P: 6,836.17
+3.41 2/13
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