Financial and tech stocks led a third straight day of gains on Wall Street. It comes the day after Fed Chair Janet Yellen calmed market watchers with her comments that the Fed would take its time and carefully consider raising interest rates over the foreseeable future.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” today:
“The threshold for having confidence that inflation will sustainably move up to our 2 percent inflation target, is pretty high, that hurdle is pretty high. I’d be surprised if we met that condition myself in April.”
Later, according to a Reuters report-
“Speaking to the Forecasters Club of New York, Chicago Fed President Evans said that a “very shallow” series of interest rate hikes over the next few years is appropriate to buffer the U.S. economy from outside shocks and the risk of inflation slipping too low. He raised his inflation forecast for this year to 1.6 percent — though he still expects it to take up to three years to hit the Fed’s 2-percent target. Evans also said a slow succession of U.S. rate hikes is warranted given the early-year bout of market volatility and the likelihood that such episodes will be more frequent, according to Reuters.”
Meantime, as Wall Street prepares for earnings season (which is quickly approaching), if the last few quarters of 2015 are any indication, investors could be just a little bit depressed when 1st quarter-2016 figures start coming in.
According to Reuters S&P 500 earnings are forecast to drop nearly 7% percent from the same quarter last year.
See more from CNBC below.
Here are the final numbers from Wednesday, 3/30/16 on Wall Street:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,716.66 (+83.55/ +.47 %)
NASDAQ: 4,869.29 (+22.67/ +0.47 %)
S&P 500: 2,063.96 (+8.94/ +0.44 %)
