‘It’s a great, great time for bulls’: Soft-landing views solidify in U.S. stock market After more than a year of back-and-forth debate over whether the world’s largest economy could slip into a downturn, investors are settling into the surprising conclusion that the U.S. can manage to dodge one.
Thursday’s stronger-than-expected second-quarter GDP report — accompanied by a decline in jobless benefit claims last week, a jump in durable-goods orders in June, and the real-estate industry’s declaration that the housing recession is over — is translating into more optimism than previously seen during the current cycle. The data comes after the annual headline rate of inflation from the June consumer price index came in two weeks ago at 3%, down from a 9.1% peak a year earlier.
U.S. stocks DJIA, -0.37% SPX, -0.19% COMP, 0.03% moved mostly higher Thursday afternoon in response to the data batch, with Dow industrials struggling to reach the longest winning stretch in more than a century. Meanwhile, the ICE BofA Move Index, which tracks fixed-income volatility, has fallen this week from a peak in mid-March. Even after the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates to a 22-year high of between 5.25%-5.5% on Wednesday, investors seemed to be increasingly on board with Chairman Jerome Powell’s view that “we do have a shot” at a soft landing for the economy, albeit with the caveats that “it is a long way from assured” and “we have a lot left to go to see that happen.”..............
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-a-great-great-time-for-bulls-soft-landing-views-solidify-in-u-s-stock-market-7892bda7?mod=home-page
