Stock Market Today: US Stocks Rise as Markets Digest Powell Comments

US stock indices continued to rise a day after the Fed chair’s testimony to Congress. The SPX posting a new ATH.

The broad US stock market was on the rise again after Powell’s testimony today in front of the Senate’s Banking Committee. The stock market has been eager to see some evidence of a pivot point happening sooner rather than later.

However, Powell fell short again today of putting a possible date on the calendar. The Federal Reserve chairman reiterated his comments from yesterday in front of the House committee. Simply put, he also today the Senate that interest rates can and will begin this year.

That’s just the type of comment the stock market wanted to hear. The S&P 500 is up today by 0.9% after touching an ATH at 5156.74 earlier on. Unemployment claims were released earlier today higher than expected. But this type of bad economic news is just not bad enough to even slightly shake US stock investor confidence.

Total claims rose to 1.906 million, up from 1.898 million last month. While the monthly number came in at 217 thousand unchanged from last month, most forecasts had been for a decline to 215 thousand.

Nasdaq Underperforms

On the other hand, even though the Nasdaq is up today, 1.47% it still hasn’t managed to pull another ATH yet. Mainly due to the weight of some of the tech megacaps that took a beating this week.

However, TSLA stocks managed to recover some ground today after losing more than 12% over the week. Most of that drop came on the back of news of arson at the company factory in Germany, which shut the facility down. However, the company expects to resume production sometime next week.

When stocks like $AAPL and $TSLA possibly catch up on some lost ground, we should see the Nasdaq staying more in line with the performance of the main stock indices like the S&P 500.

Tomorrow we’ll get the highly anticipated Non-Farm Payrolls, so we should see some extra volatility post numbers. The consensus is for a figure of 200k, compared to a previous of 353k.