Stock market news: November 14, 2019 – Yahoo Finance

The S&P 500 edged up to a record closing high at the end of a choppy day of trading. The Dow was off just slightly as declines in shares of Cisco weighed on the 30-stock index.

Stocks briefly dropped more steeply Thursday afternoon after the Financial Times reported U.S. and Chinese officials were struggling to finalize a phase one trade deal, as the two sides tiff over intellectual property provisions, agricultural purchase agreements and tariffs.

Here’s where the markets settled Thursday at the end of regular equity trading.

• S&P 500 (^GSPC): +0.08%, or 2.59 points

• Dow (^DJI): -0.01%, or 1.63 points

• Nasdaq (^IXIC): -0.04%, or 3.08 points

• 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX): -4.7 bps to 1.822%

• Gold (GC=F): +0.53% to $1,471.00 per ounce

A number of Federal Open Market Committee members were on the docket to deliver public remarks Thursday, providing more guidance as to the direction of future monetary policy after the Federal Reserve’s October rate cut. Powell submitted identical prepared remarks to both the House Committee on the Budget and the Joint Economic Committee.

To this end, Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s second day of congressional testimony was the headlining event. He spoke before the House Budget Committee starting at 10 a.m. ET.

Other Fed speakers Thursday included Vice Chair Richard Clarida, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, New York Fed President John Williams, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan.

Markets largely took Powell’s remarks during testimony both days to serve as a reiteration of the Fed’s previously telegraphed message that rates would remain on hold until the economic outlook shifted materially.

“While Powell didn’t change the message from the last FOMC meeting, he did add a few details,” JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli wrote in a note Wednesday. Powell used the testimony in part to segue “into a discussion of the need for fiscal policy to support the economy in the next downturn, given monetary policy’s now-limited scope to provide such support” after three rate cuts this year to a range of between 1.5% and 1.75%, Feroli said.

“While the executive branch has been preemptively blaming the Fed for any potential future economic slowdown, [yesterday] the Fed preemptively requested policy support from the legislative branch in the event of such a slowdown,” he said.

In his testimony, Powell underscored the “favorable” outlook for the U.S. economy as data came in better than expected in recent weeks. Other global economies, however, have been less robust.

The German economy grew at an anemic 0.1% pace in the third quarter, according to preliminary government data Thursday. However, this was a surprise increase in economic activity for the euro area’s largest economy, helping avoid a technical recession following a downwardly revised 0.2% GDP decline in the second quarter. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Consensus economists had expected German GDP to decline by 0.1% in the third-quarter, as Germany’s key manufacturing sector continued to be hit by an ongoing trade war. Overall, eurozone economic growth was just 0.2% in the third quarter, matching expectations and the second quarter’s growth rate for the slowest rate of increase since September 2018.

STOCKS: Walmart raises outlook, Cisco guides down again

Walmart (WMT) posted strong third-quarter sales and raised guidance for the full-year ahead of the holiday season. Comparable same-store sales, a closely watched metric for retailers, climbed 3.2% in the U.S. excluding gas, as the number of customers and average ticket grew. This topped the 3.1% sales growth expected, according to Bloomberg.

The retail giant boosted its outlook for full-year adjusted earnings per share and said it now expects to see a slight increase, after in August guiding toward a slight decrease to a slight increase over last year.