Stock market today: Wall Street rises toward records as jubilation sweeps markets worldwide

The S&P 500 was 1.8% higher in afternoon trading and above its all-time closing high set in July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 533 points, or 1.3%, and on track to top its record set on Monday. The Nasdaq composite was 2.8% higher, as of 12:26 p.m. Eastern time.

The rally was widespread, and the company behind Olive Garden and Ruth’s Chris, Darden Restaurants, helped lead the way with a jump of 8.5% after saying its sales trends have been improving since a sharp step down in July. It also announced a delivery partnership with Uber.

Nvidia, meanwhile, barreled 5.2% higher and was once again the strongest force lifting the S&P 500. Lower interest rates weaken criticism by a bit that its stock price and other influential Big Techs’ look too expensive following the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Wall Street’s gains followed rallies for markets across Europe and Asia after the Federal Reserve delivered the first cut to interest rates in more than four years late on Wednesday.

It was a momentous move, closing the door on a run where the Fed kept its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of slowing the U.S. economy enough to stamp out high inflation. Now that inflation has come down from its peak two summers ago, Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed can focus more on keeping the job market solid and the economy out of a recession.

Wall Street’s initial reaction to Wednesday’s cut was a yawn, after markets had already run up for months on expectations for coming reductions to rates, and stocks ended up edging lower after swinging a few times.

“Yet we come in today and have a reversal of the reversal,” said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG. He said he did not anticipate such a big jump for stocks on Thursday.

Some analysts said it could have been relief that the Fed’s Powell was able to thread the needle in his press conference and suggest the deeper-than-usual cut was just a “recalibration” of policy and not an urgent move that it had to take to prevent a recession.

That bolstered hopes that the Federal Reserve can successfully walk its tightrope and get inflation fully under control without a recession. So too did a couple reports on the economy released Thursday. One showed fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, another signal that layoffs across the country remain low.

The pressure nevertheless is still on the Fed because the job market and hiring has begun to slow under the weight of higher interest rates. Some critics say the central bank waited too long to cut rates and may have done damage to the economy.

Powell, though, said Fed officials are not in “a rush to get this done” and would make decisions on policy at each successive meeting depending on what the incoming data says.

Some investment banks raised their forecasts for how much the Federal Reserve will ultimately cut interest rates, anticipating even deeper reduction than Fed officials. Federal Reserve officials on Wednesday released forecasts showing they expect to cut interest rates by potentially another half of a percentage point in 2024 and another full point in 2025. The federal funds rate is currently sitting in a range of 4.75% to 5%.

Lower interest rates help financial markets in two big ways. They ease the brakes off the economy by making it easier for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money, which can accelerate spending and investment. They also give a boost to prices of all kinds of investments, from gold to bonds to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin rose to roughly $63,000 Thursday, up from about $27,000 a year ago.

An adage suggests investors should not “fight the Fed” and ride the rising tide when the central bank is cutting interest rates, and Wall Street was certainly doing that Thursday. But this economic cycle has continued to break conventional wisdoms after the COVID-19 pandemic created an instant recession that gave way to the worst inflation in generations.

One of the worries still remaining on Wall Street is that inflation could remain tougher to fully subdue than in the past. And while lower rates can help goose the economy, they can also give inflation more fuel.

The upcoming U.S. presidential election could also keep uncertainty reigning in the market. A fear is that both the Democrats and Republicans could push for policies that add to the U.S. government’s debt, which could keep upward pressure on interest rates regardless of the Fed’s moves.

History may also offer few clues about how things may progress given how unusual the conditions are. This looks to have the most aggressive expectations for rate cuts out of any past easing cycles, according to strategists at Bank of America.

The economic conditions of this one could resemble 1995 a bit, but unfortunately “no great analogs exist,” the strategists led by Alex Cohen wrote in a BofA Global Research report.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 3.74% from 3.71% late Wednesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell to 3.60% from 3.63%.

In stock markets aboard, indexes jumped 2.3% in France, 2.1% in Japan and 2% in Hong Kong.

The FTSE 100 rose 0.9% in London after the Bank of England kept interest rates there on hold. The Bank of Japan will announce its latest decision on interest rates on Friday.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.