wecastonlineWorld stocks were mostly higher on Wednesday after a rally on Wall Street that took the Nasdaq composite index to a record high.
A report Tuesday showed that prices remain stubbornly high at the wholesale level in the United States, before many price changes are passed along to consumers, with the producer price index reading for April reaching 0.5%, higher than forecast.
The rate of inflation has been ticking higher in 2024, raising concerns that the Federal Reserve could have a hard time taming inflation to its goal of 2%.
But investors were reassured by comments made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Speaking at a panel discussion in Amsterdam on Tuesday, he reaffirmed that the U.S. central bank won’t likely raise its key interest rate to respond to stubborn inflation. But he also said that his confidence that inflation will ease is “not as high as it was” because price increases have been persistently hot in the first three months of this year.
A bigger test for markets comes later Wednesday, when the U.S. will release its monthly update on consumer prices, or inflation faced by households. Economists expect the consumer price index to ease to 3.4% in April on a year-over-year basis
