Wall Street Today | US Producer Prices Approach Deflation With 0.1% Annual Rise

Wall Street got an extra dose of encouragement to bid up stocks after another inflation report reinforced bets the Federal Reserve is approaching an interest-rate peak.

Equities headed toward their fourth straight day of gains, with the S&P 500 topping 4,500 and tech megacaps back to the forefront. The Nasdaq 100 climbed 1.5%.

US applications for unemployment benefits fell last week, suggesting companies are holding onto workers despite a moderation in job gains.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits dropped by 12,000 to 237,000 in the week ending July 8, according to a Labor Department report published Thursday.

US producer prices barely rose in June from a year earlier, another sign of cooler inflation that will likely comfort Federal Reserve officials.

The producer price index for final demand rose 0.1% from a year earlier, the smallest advance since 2020, according to data out Thursday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On a monthly basis, the PPI also increased 0.1% after falling in the prior month.

Hedge funds had been bracing for weakness, as they turned net sellers of the dollar for the first time since March, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission aggregated by Bloomberg.

Global benchmark Brent settled at an 11-week high as supply outages tightened the physical market.

Libya’s second-biggest oil field is in the process of shutting amid protests there. The outage of the roughly 250,000 barrel-a-day Sharara field follows disruptions at the country’s El Feel area and Nigeria’s Forcados oil terminal.

Prices recently pierced key technical levels such as the 100-day moving average, breaking out of the tight trading range they’ve been stuck in for two months after. Now traders are keeping a close watch on whether futures will cross above their 200-day moving averages — around $82.50 for Brent and $77.30 for WTI — which could trigger more buying.

On Thursday, Pepsi reported second-quarter earnings per share of $1.99 on revenue of $22.3 billion, beating the expectations of analysts surveyed by FactSet, who had forecast per-share earnings of $1.96 and revenue of $21.7 billion.

Amazon Prime members bought more than 375 million items worldwide. Last year, shoppers bought more than 300 million items during Prime Day.