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Wall Street continues to hotly anticipate Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech on Friday.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
The stock market looks set for another quiet day Wednesday as investors continue to look ahead to the economic symposium in Jackson Hole.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures have advanced 26 points, or 0.1%.
&P 500
futures have risen 0.2%, and
Nasdaq Composite
futures have gained 0.1%.
“Markets continued to stabilize with focus remaining on the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium later in the week,” writes Sevens Reports’ Tom Essaye.
Jackson Hole often gets used by central-bank chiefs to offer market-moving views, whether Ben Bernanke’s announcement of a second round of quantitative easing in 2009 or Jerome Powell’s reassessment of inflation targeting in 2020. Now, investors are wondering whether the Fed Chair will sound more hawkish, in contrast to the minutes from the July meeting, or reaffirm a more dovish bent.
Investors will have some more data to ponder as they try to guess what the Fed may do. Durable goods orders are due this morning, and economists are expecting those to have risen 1% month over month for July, which would be down from the 2% June result. Pending home sales, meanwhile, are expected to have declined 3% month over month for July after having declined 8.7% in June, following the decline in new home sales that was revealed in a release on Tuesday.
These declines wouldn’t be such a sorry sight for the stock market. It would confirm that the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate hikes—and higher mortgage rates—might be…
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