Stock Market Update: S&P 500 Eyes Prolonged Winning Streak, Fed's Next Move in Focus
Stay informed with our easy-to-understand market report. Discover how the S&P 500 aims to extend its winning streak and what the Federal Reserve might do with interest rates. Get the latest updates on Disney, Arm, and oil prices.
On Thursday, the stock market had a bit of a back-and-forth, as people who invest money kept a close watch on what the Federal Reserve, a big financial group, might do with interest rates.
The S&P 500, which is like a big group of important companies, went up and down but didn't change much overall. This happened after it had a good run of eight days in a row going up, which is the longest it's done that in two years. Another important group of companies, the Dow Jones, went down a little bit (0.2%), while the Nasdaq, which has a lot of technology companies, stayed pretty much the same.
People are curious to hear from a person named Jerome Powell, who leads the Federal Reserve. They hope he'll give some hints about whether they might change interest rates soon. He didn't talk about it on Wednesday, so everyone is waiting for his next speech.
Companies are also telling us how well they're doing. Disney, a big entertainment company, shared that they did even better than what people expected. This made their stock go up, and it might also have to do with some good news about Hollywood and actors. Other companies in media got a boost from this too.
But not every company had good news. Arm, a company that designs computer parts, saw their stock go down after they shared their first report since becoming a public company. Also, the company that supports Arm, SoftBank, said they lost a lot of money last quarter, about $6.2 billion.
When it comes to things like oil that we use for energy, the price went up a bit. It had gone down a lot before, and this might help ease worries about how much people around the world are using it. So, the prices for two types of oil, West Texas Intermediate and Brent, went up by about 0.5%. They're now trading at around $76 and almost $80 for each barrel, which is a way we measure oil.
That's what happened in the stock market today! Keep an eye out for more updates.
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