U.S. stocks bounced around to a higher close on Thursday, even though investors received some encouraging inflation news after the consumer-price index for December showed its first monthly decline since the pandemic swept across the globe in 2020.
To get a better sense of what led to such a muted reaction in stocks, despite the economic milestone, MarketWatch collected insights from market strategists on what happened. Instead, the core level, which omits volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.3%, matching the median forecast from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
Report didn’t move the needle Several markets commentators noted in the wake of the CPI report that the data didn’t fundamentally change expectations about where interest rates will peak, or how quickly the Fed will shift from hiking rates to cutting them. Signs of slowing wage growth in December helped inspire a 700-point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when the monthly labor-market report was released a week ago Friday. The report showed the pace of average hourly earnings growth over the prior year slowed to 4.6% in December from 4.8% in November. But markets had already priced this in, strategists said.
Valuations still too high Finally, while lower inflation tends to benefit equity valuations, stocks still seem too richly priced based on previous periods of high inflation, said Greg Stanek, a portfolio manager at Gilman Hill Asset Management.
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