Wall Street edged modestly higher early Tuesday as markets pored over more corporate earnings while awaiting the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates coming Wednesday.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 each gained 0.3% before the bell.
Caterpillar slumped more than 4% before markets opened Tuesday after the heavy machine manufacturer posted its most recent earnings. The company beat Wall Street targets but noted a dropoff in backorders, which sent investors fleeing.
JetBlue tumbled 7% in premarket after the airline posted a wider loss than analysts expected, blaming weather and higher fuel prices. Lawyers for the New York airline will also be squaring off in court with the U.S. Justice Department Tuesday.
Fresh off killing a partnership between JetBlue and American Airlines, the Biden Administration is suing to block JetBlue’s proposed $3.8 billion acquisition of Spirit Airlines.
Profit reports from roughly 150 companies in the S&P 500 are due this week. That includes the latest quarterly report from Apple on Thursday. Because it’s the most valuable stock on Wall Street, it is also the most influential stock on the S&P 500.
Later Tuesday, the U.S. government will release data on employment costs for the July-September quarter. Workers have been fighting for higher raises, but the Fed worries that overly high pay increases could fuel more inflation. Also, the Conference Board will release its consumer confidence index for October.
On Wednesday comes the Fed’s policy statement and an update on the number of job openings across the country. One way the Federal Reserve could pull off the delicate balancing act of slowing the economy without creating a recession would be if the number of job openings cools without requiring waves of layoffs.
Friday brings the jobs report for October, typically one of the most anticipated troves of economic data.
Elsewhere, the Japanese yen weakened against the dollar after the Bank of Japan changed its language on government bond yields to allow yields on 10-year bonds to rise above 1%, calling it “a reference point” instead of a more rigidly set cap.
But the central bank kept its longstanding benchmark interest rate of minus 0.1%. It is on a different track from the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks that have been tightening their monetary policies to counter inflation.
That has led to a dramatically weakening Japanese yen that has raised the value in local currency of overseas earnings by Japan’s exporters. On Tuesday, the dollar rose to 150.71 Japanese yen from 149.10 yen.
In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 0.5% to finish at 30,858.85. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.1% to 6,780.70. South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.4% to 2,277.99. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 1.7% to 17,112.48, while the Shanghai Composite declined nearly 0.1% to 3,018.77.
At midday in Europe, France’s CAC 40 added 1.1%, Germany’s DAX rose nearly 0.6% and Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.5%.
In other trading Tuesday, benchmark U.S. crude added 61 cents to $82.92 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell 3.8% Monday to $82.31. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 59 cents to $86.94 per barrel.
The euro rose to $1.0656 from $1.0617.
On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 1.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.6%. The Nasdaq composite added 1.2%.
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