On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices reached new record levels on Monday, although the President of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, indicated that the Fed should not rush to lower interest rates.
Dow Jones strengthened by 0.04 percent, to 42,330 points, while the S&P 500 rose by 0.42 percent, to 5,762 points, and the Nasdaq index increased by 0.38 percent, to 18,189 points.
Investors were focused yesterday on Fed Chairman Powell’s speech at an economists’ conference, where he stated that there is no need for the central bank to rush to reduce interest rates.
He mentioned that he expects a total interest rate reduction of 0.50 percentage points by the end of the year as the economic situation unfolds as anticipated.
Given that inflation is easing in the U.S., the Fed recently began a cycle of monetary policy easing by cutting rates by 0.50 percentage points.
This aggressive cut sparked market speculation that the central bank would also reduce rates by 0.50 percentage points in November and by an additional 0.25 points in December.
However, following Powell’s comments, those speculations subsided.
Despite this, the indices rose yesterday, recording significant gains throughout September.
Thus, the S&P 500 increased for the fifth consecutive month in September, by 2 percent. In the entire third quarter, it jumped by 5.5 percent, while the Dow Jones rose by more than 8 percent and the Nasdaq index by about 2.5 percent during that period.
