U.S. stocks looked set to open lower on Thursday as index futures fell, leaving the market on track to extend the S&P 500’s longest streak of daily losses since early May as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell returns to Congress to testify for a second day.
What’s driving markets U.S. stocks have seen a modest pullback since the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite put in fresh 14-month highs late last week. While inflation has retreated from the 40-year highs reached last summer, Powell and other Fed officials have suggested that it’s not waning quickly enough to justify an end to the central bank’s hikes. The consumer price index, a closely watched inflation gauge, rose by a scant 0.1% in May.
Despite the threat of higher interest rates, stocks have powered higher since the beginning of 2023, thanks in large part to advances made by shares of a handful of tech stocks, especially those benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence software, such as Nvidia Corp. NVDA , Microsoft Corp. MSFT , Apple Inc. AAPL and Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s Class A GOOGL and Class C GOOG . The S&P 500 has risen more than 13% year-to-date, according to FactSet data.