STOCK MARKET TODAY: Wall Street rises to start a week filled with earnings reports and a Fed meeting

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose Monday to start a week filled with potentially market-moving reports.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 16.21 points, or 0.3%, to 5,116.17, coming off its best week since November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 146.43, or 0.4%, to 38,386.09, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 55.18, or 0.3%, to 15,983.08.

This week will see about a third of companies in the S&P 500 index announce how much profit they made during the first three months of the year. This includes heavyweights like Amazon and Apple. Reports so far have been largely better than expected, with nearly half of the S&P 500 reports, which were highlighted last week by… the alphabet, Microsoft And others.

Domino's added Pizza to the pile on Monday, reporting stronger-than-expected results thanks to a second straight quarter of higher delivery and carryout orders. Its shares rose 5.6%.

Stocks are off to a promising start. AP's Seth Sottile reports.

Tesla was also a big force pushing the market higher and jumped 15.3%. Its CEO, Elon Musk met with a high-ranking Chinese official As it tries to increase sales in the world's largest car market.

On the losing end was SoFi Technologies, which fell by 10.5%. The financial services company reported better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected, but its forecast for net income in the current quarter was lower than expected.

Strong earnings reports last week helped the S&P 500 rise to record highs First win week in four. Companies in the index appear on track to report a third straight quarter of growth in earnings per share, according to FactSet.

The stock market will need such strength to stabilize after a shaky April. The S&P 500 fell as much as 5.5% during the month as signs of this Continuously high inflation Traders were forced to scale back expectations on when the Fed might start Easing interest rates.

After entering the forecast for the year Six or more After interest rates were cut through 2024, traders are now placing many bets on just one, according to data from CME Group.

When the Fed announces its latest policy decision on Wednesday, no one expects it to move its key interest rate, which stands at its highest level since 2001. Instead, the hope is that the central bank can provide some clues about when the first… Monetary policy move. Price cuts could come.

This week's Fed meeting will not include the release of Fed officials' forecasts for where they see interest rates heading in the coming years. The last set of such forecasts, released in March, showed what a typical Fed official said at the time Pencil in three pieces For the year 2024.

But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell could offer more color in his news conference following the central bank's decision. He suggested earlier this month that interest rates could stay high for longer as the Fed waits for more evidence that inflation is trending sustainably lower toward its 2% target.

The report due on Wall Street on Friday could further change policymakers' expectations. Economists expect Friday's jobs report to show that hiring by US employers slowed in April and that growth in workers' wages remained relatively flat.

The hope on Wall Street is that the labor market remains strong enough to help the economy avoid a recession, but not so strong that it fuels inflation with upward pressure.

Because inflation has been hotter than expected and because the economy has remained very resilient, economists at BNP Paribas recently pushed back their expectations for the Fed's first rate cut.

They had expected action in July, but said a postponement to September could be uncomfortably close to the US presidential election in November. So they are now calling on the Fed to make its first cut in December.

Skipping September will not only help the Fed avoid appearing like it is trying to influence the election results, it will also give the Fed the opportunity to see if the election will lead to major policy changes that affect the direction the economy and inflation are headed, according to the team. BNP Paribas, led by Andy Schneider.

“Even if the economy develops such that it justifies a cut by September, we believe these risks are likely to outweigh any marginal economic benefits that might come from” a cut just before the election, they said.

In overseas markets, the Japanese stock market was closed for the holiday. But no The Japanese yen continued to fluctuate sharply after its decline to what it was against the US dollar in 1990.

Elsewhere, stock indices rose in most parts of Asia while remaining mixed in Europe.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.61% from 4.67% late Friday.