Stocks took a break Monday from their recent rally after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell rejected expectations for interest rate cuts Coming in the first half of 2024.
But the Federal Reserve Chairman's comments Sunday night on CBS 60 minutes It further dashed hopes that the central bank's rate-setting committee would begin easing rates any time soon.
Subscribe to Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Be a smarter, more informed investor.
Save up to 74%
Subscribe to Kiplinger's Free Email Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more, delivered right to your email.
Profit and prosper with the best expert advice, delivered right to your inbox.
"Markets are stumbling today after Fed Chief Jerome Powell's reiterations of 'higher for longer' in a 60 minutes interview last night," writes Josรฉ Torres, senior economist at Interactive corridors
U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by 353,000 in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics he said Friday, far exceeding economists' estimate of 185,000 job creation. The surprisingly strong jobs report has already all but eliminated the possibility of the Federal Reserve enacting its first quarter-point rate cut in March , the experts said. But Powell's comments on Sunday night prompted market participants to recalibrate their models.
"We pushed back our forecast for the first cut from March to May, but we still expect five cuts in 2024 (May, June, July, September and December) and three more in 2025," wrote Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs .
Interest rate traders currently assign an 85% probability that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will leave rates unchanged in the next Fed meeting in March. The odds that the first quarter-point cut will come at the Federal Reserve's May meeting are 55%, according to CME Group. FedWatch Tool
In the sense that good news is bad news, growth in the US services sector accelerated in January, Supply Management Institute
"The better-than-expected ISM-Services report underlined Powell's remarks on the risks of a possible rise in inflation, with data showing prices expanding faster than a cheetah, driven in part by strong demand of consumers," writes Torres of Interactive Brokers.
Earnings in focus
With little economic news on the agenda in the coming days, market participants are focusing on the earnings schedule . Among the names in the news on that front on Monday were several top-rated stocks in the Dow Jones . Caterpillar (CAT ), meanwhile, rose further into record territory after the world's largest maker of heavy construction and mining equipment posted upbeat fourth-quarter results.
Elsewhere in the Dow, shares of McDonald's (DCM ) fell 3.7% after reporting mixed quarterly results. In non-earnings related news, Dow shares boeing (BA) continued its fall (-1.3%) after the The aerospace giant said it encountered manufacturing problems.
When the closing bell rings, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average S&P 500 lost 0.3% to 4,942. heavy technology Nasdaq Compound
Nvidia reaches $1.712 billion in market value
He technology sector and communications services stocks fell broadly in Monday's pullback, and yet stocks in everyone's favorite way to bet on the Generative AI The future continued to reach record levels.
NVIDIA NVDA ) shares gained 4.8% after Goldman Sachs Analysts raised their price target and reiterated their Buy recommendation on the name.
"We no longer assume a decline in data center revenue in the second half of calendar 2024 and instead model steady growth through the first half of calendar 2025, driven by continued spending on Gen AI infrastructure by large cloud service providers, an increasingly broad customer profile, and multiple new product cycles," writes the Goldman Sachs team led by analyst Toshiya Hari.
With a new price target of $800, Goldman Sachs offers NVDA stock an implied price upside of around 16% over the next 12 or so months. financial world The average price target is $679.64, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence ranging from a maximum of $1000 to a minimum of $410.
Nvidia shares have more than tripled in the last 52 weeks, cementing its position as one of the The best stocks of the last 30 years. . And anyone who puts $1,000 in NVDA a couple of decades ago I would also be delighted with today's results.
Nvidia added $78 billion in market capitalization on Monday to take it to $1.712 trillion. That's only about $50 billion less than Amazon's market value.
Related content 
