Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq climb to records as sharp jobs revision sets stage for inflation data
US stocks hit fresh records on Tuesday as investors digested a revision to US jobs numbers that showed further labor market weakness and braced for key inflation data that could reset expectations for interest-rate cuts.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) climbed nearly 0.5% to close above 45,725. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.3% to also notch a fresh record close above 6,512. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained 0.4%, marking its second consecutive closing high this week.
Labor market data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed the US economy likely added 911,000 fewer jobs than previously thought in the 12-month period through March 2025 — a steeper revision than expected. Economists tracked by Bloomberg had expected the data to show around 680,000 fewer jobs added to the economy in that time frame.
The otherwise regular update took higher economic and political prominence than usual as debate reigns over how the Federal Reserve will react to the data after a slew of indications that the labor market is slowing down. So far, those signs have convinced traders that an interest-rate cut is coming when Fed policymakers meet next week. Now the question has shifted to how large the reduction might be, and whether that will be a boon for stocks.
Reports on inflation crucial to Fed thinking are due starting Wednesday with the latest reading of the producer price index (PPI). The consumer price index (CPI) follows on Thursday. The CPI and PPI readings will shine light on whether rising prices could become a significant stumbling block to deep or sustained rate cuts.
Also in focus was Apple's (AAPL) annual fall event, where the tech giant showcased devices including the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, as well as new watches and heart rate-tracking AirPods. Apple stock fell around 1.5%.
Elsewhere on the corporate front, shares of Tourmaline Bio (TRML) and Nebius (NBIS) both jumped over 50% on deal news, with Swiss pharma giant Novartis (NVS, NOVN.SW) and Big Tech Microsoft (MSFT) respectively.
Oracle (ORCL) and GameStop (GME) report earnings after the bell.
US stocks closed at fresh records on Tuesday as the market shrugged off a downward revision to US jobs numbers and investors turned their focus to this week's inflation print.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) climbed 0.5% to close at a new high. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.3%, also notching a record close along with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) which gained 0.4%.
Labor market data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed a weakening labor market, with the US economy adding 911,000 fewer jobs than previously expected in the 12-month period through March 2025.
Investors are now turning their focus on inflation data this week, including the latest reading of the producer price index (PPI) due out on Wednesday and the consumer price index (CPI) on Thursday.
Gold edged up to fresh highs on Tuesday as investors continued to bet on a September rate cut from the Federal Reserve and the dollar stayed weak.
Gold (GC=F) futures touched an intraday high north of $3,700 per troy ounce before paring gains, while spot prices climbed above $3,650.
Gold edged up to fresh highs on Tuesday as investors continued to bet on a September rate cut from the Federal Reserve, and the dollar stayed weak ahead of this week’s inflation report.
Yahoo Finance's Brooke DiPalma reports:
Cracker Barrel's (CBRL) old country restaurant look and feel is here to stay — for now.
The restaurant chain said it is suspending the remodel of its restaurants. This comes on the heels of the company's controversial logo redesign, which sent the stock tumbling amid broad customer backlash and a rebuke from President Trump. It all ended in a return to its old logo featuring \\"Old Timer\\" Uncle Herschel and a barrel.
\\"Today, we're suspending our remodels. If your restaurant hasn't been remodeled, you don't need to worry, it won't be,\\" the company said in a statement on its website in a page titled \\"WE HEAR YOU.\\"
Read more here.
Apple (AAPL) stock moved lower as its event concluded with the introduction of new phones. It was down around 1.5% as of 2:15 p.m. ET.
Here's Dan Howley on the new Apple (AAPL) watches:
Apple Watch Series 11
Apple says the $399 Series 11 is now 2 times more scratch resistant than its predecessor the Series 10. The watch also now gets 5G connectivity for the first time and uses less battery for cellular connections.
Apple Watch Ultra 3
Apple also unveiled its high-powered Apple Watch Ultra 3. The $799 watch now gets a larger, brighter display with improved refresh rates so you can see seconds in the always-on screen.
Apple Watch SE 3
Apple's $249 entry-level SE also gets upgrades including an always-on display, wrist temperature tracking, and more. Apple says the watch also gets sleep apnea tracking and the company's new sleep scoring, as well as a speaker that can play music.
Read more here.
Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley is at the big Apple (AAPL) event today and will keep bringing updates.
The company's first product salvo: it's new AirPods, the AirPods 3, complete with heart rate tracking and a translating feature.
Howley reports:
Apple says the buds take advantage of machine learning data and accelerometers to track your heart rate without the need for an Apple Watch. You can also use AirPods Pro 3 with Apple Fitness Plus to track various exercises with your heart rate.
The AirPods Pro 3 also now feature a custom multi-port architecture to help improve sound quality. The earbud's noise cancellation also gets a boost with Phone-infused earbud tips that are twice as effective as AirPods Pro 2 and four times better than the original AirPods Pro.
The AirPods Pro 3s are also getting live translation powered by Apple Intelligence. When you are with someone who speaks a different language, you can press the buds and they'll automatically start translating from one language into another. They'll also translate entire phrases rather than just individual words.
When both people are wearing the AirPods Pro 3, they'll allow people to go back and forth in conversation in completely separate languages. Apple says this runs on Apple Intelligence models on the iPhone.
Apple stock is basically doing nothing as the event continues.
Read more here.
Oil prices advanced nearly 1% on Tuesday as Middle East tensions escalated after Israel announced it had struck Qatar.
West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) trimmed earlier gains of as much as 2%, to hover near $62.80 per barrel. Brent (BZ=F) traded up nearly 1% to 66.30 per barrel.
Prices rose after Israel Defense Forces said on X it conducted \\"a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization.\\"
Oil initially rose as much as much as 2% immediately following the strike as analysts assessed how a widening of the Middle East conflict could impact markets.
\\"Qatar’s role as both a key energy exporter and a diplomatic mediator means that any disruption to its stability could affect supply expectations,\\" Konstantinos Chrysikos head of customer relationship management at Kudotrade said in a note on Tuesday.
Despite Tuesday's gains, Brent is down more than 10% year-to-date, while WTI has declined more than 11% during the same period.
Oracle (ORCL) is scheduled to report its fiscal first quarter earnings after the bell Tuesday, with Wall Street analysts expecting a 30% year-over-year jump in cloud revenue.
Yahoo Finance's Laura Bratton reports:
The company has been securing a massive amount of Nvidia’s coveted GPUs (graphics processing units, or AI chips) and renting out that computing power through its OCI cloud business.
Analysts expect Cloud Services, the company’s largest revenue driver, to increase to $7.3 billion in Q1.
More important for investors is any additional color the company may provide on its reported $30 billion deal with OpenAI, analyst said. Read the full story here.
The Energy Sector (XLE) led gains in stocks on the S&P 500 (^GSPC) on Tuesday, adding around 1.7%. The sector climbed as oil (CL=F, BZ=F) extended a recent rise following an Israeli strike on Qatar.
Chevron (CVX) climbed 1.5%, and ConocoPhillips (COP) rose 2%. Exxon Mobil (XOM) stock added more than 2% as the company also announced the purchase of a battery factory to further its push into the energy storage market.
Meanwhile, the Materials and Industrial Sectors (XLB, XLI) fell 1.5% and just over 1%, leading losses.
Rate cut bets were in focus but remained steady after data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a sharper-than-expected revision to jobs data for the 12 months through March 2025.
Traders continued to price in 90% chances of a 25 basis point rate cut from the Federal Reserve at its September meeting and 10% odds of a 50 basis point cut following the release of the BLS data on Tuesday, according to CME Group.
Recent federal economic data has shown deepening cracks in the US labor market, leading to investor certainty that the central bank will reduce interest rates this month but raising fears of a recession.
After last week's August jobs report was far weaker than projected, the rate cut debate has centered on how steep the cuts will be rather than whether they will happen at all.
US nonfarm payrolls for the 12 months ended March 2025 were slashed by 911,000 jobs, according to preliminary revisions released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists had predicted a downward shift of 682,000 jobs for the period, according to analysts tracked by Bloomberg data.
The revisions follow an August payrolls increase of only 22,000 jobs, according to BLS data released Friday, coming in far below economists' consensus estimate of 75,000 jobs added.
That data also showed the economy lost jobs in June for the first time in four and a half years, losing 13,000 jobs compared to prior estimates of 14,000 jobs added.
Last year's release of this same preliminary annual revision fell during the heated final stretch of the presidential campaign — and became an immediate flash point when it showed the US economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than thought.
The August figures released Friday have been interpreted as largely locking in a September rate cut by the Federal Reserve next week, shifting the question away from one of whether the central bank will cut rates to just how big a nearly guaranteed cut will be.
Traders are pricing in a 100% chance of a cut, with 90% odds of a cut of 25 basis points versus 10% odds of a jumbo 50 basis point cut, according to CME data.
US stocks crept higher on Tuesday as investors expected a revision to jobs numbers to show evidence of further weakening in the labor market weakness that could affect expectations for interest rate cuts.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) nudged up less than 0.1%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained over 0.1%.
Traders are all but certain an interest rate cut is coming at the Fed's meeting next week, and many are hoping that dovishness will boost stocks after a choppy summer.
But some Wall Street strategists are warning that rate cuts may not turn out to be all good news for stocks in the near term.
Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal reports:
Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist of Yardeni Research, warned Monday that easier monetary policy could spark a destabilizing \\"melt-up\\" in US stocks without addressing America's labor supply shortage, strained by President Trump's immigration crackdown and an aging population.
\\"We think that by cutting rates this month, the Fed would be stimulating an economy that doesn't need easier monetary policy,\\" he said. \\"Stimulating an economy that doesn't need stimulation won't create more workers to address the undersupply that's constraining the demand for labor.\\"
Yardeni argued that with productivity improving and the unemployment rate still historically low, extra liquidity risks fueling a speculative rally driven by investor FOMO rather than fundamentals — the kind of rally, he warned, that often ends in a sharp correction.
Yardeni isn't alone in his skepticism. Others see the risks of rate cuts outweighing the potential benefits.
Read more here.
SailPoint (SAIL) shares are getting hammered in premarket, last down about 12% after the identity security company's second quarter earnings release.
I'm not seeing what the Street is seeing: Full-year guidance lifted across the board. I am on the earnings call, and it seems like it's going well — the comments on demand are bullish.
I am live on Yahoo Finance with SailPoint CEO Mark McClain at around 9:45 a.m. ET for more on the results. Tune in here.
Day 1 is in the books for me at the big Goldman Sachs tech and media conference in San Francisco — I'm prepping as we speak for a super-busy Day 2.
A couple of worthwhile takeaways from my convos:
Narrative that AI will crush enterprise software companies such as Salesforce (CRM) is very persistent. It's likely to be an overhang on the sector's stocks still, in the near term. I like what Snowflake (SNOW) CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told me below on the topic.
Goldman Sachs' software analyst Kash Rangan came in with a few year-end stock calls here, and he is staying bullish on Salesforce. He didn't sound too convinced on CoreWeave (CRWV) in our discussion.
I am more intrigued by Chime (CHYM) after a breakfast meeting with its CFO Matt Newcomb. The fintech needs to do a better job telling its story to investors, and Newcomb says that's what he is focused on at the conference.
Some key live chats on Yahoo Finance coming up today:
CrowdStrike (CRWD) CEO George Kurtz: 10:30 a.m. ET
Pinterest (PINS) CEO Bill Ready: 3:20 p.m. ET
AT&T (T) CEO John Stankey: 4 p.m. ET
OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) CFO Sarah Friar: 4:05 p.m. ET
Tune in here! More convos with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator, and Affirm CEO Max Levchin will be dropping Wednesday morning on Yahoo Finance.
Economic data: NFIB small business optimism
Earnings calendar: Oracle (ORCL), Synopsys (SNPS), Rubrik (RBRK), SailPoint (SAIL), GameStop (GME)
Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed overnight and early this morning:
Why today's jobs revisions may rip through Wall Street and DC
Apple's iPhone event kicks off today. Here's what to expect.
The Fed still has the power to juice the market
401(k) savers play it safe, even as demand for private assets surges
US, South Korea talks deadlocked over $350B fund
Nebius jumps on $17.4-billion AI computing deal with Microsoft
US small-business optimism climbs but labor quality concerns persist
How does Tesla get to $8.5T value? Robots, robotaxis and hope
Eli Lilly launches platform for AI-enabled drug discovery
Lachlan Murdoch takes control of Fox, WSJ media empire
There's a lot of market noise in the Federal Reserve's quiet period ahead of its policy meeting next week, Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban notes in today's Morning Brief.
He reports:
In the media blackout leading up to the central bank's rate-setting decision next week, Chair Powell and his colleagues (and potential future and potential ex-colleagues) are still on everyone's minds.
Investors are still locked in on the play-by-play as they anticipate a decisive end to the wait-and-see mini-era that has defined the Fed's static hold since December.
The lousy jobs numbers from August have likely forced the Fed to step in. But despite the near certainty that a cut is nigh, the Fed — or the potential of the Fed's future action — still has the power to electrify the market, as the focus now moves to whether we'll see a jumbo 50 basis point rate cut or the standard 25.
How many cuts we see and how fast they come has rapidly stepped in to replace the \\"will they, won't they\\" debate.
Read more here.
A revised look at America's jobs landscape over the last year is coming Tuesday morning, with a number that is widely expected to rip through economic and political circles.
Yahoo Finance's Ben Werschkul reports:
The data is backwards-facing and is expected to show about 700,000 fewer jobs were created from March 2024 to March 2025 than previously thought. What economists are set to look for are any clues about the recent deterioration of the US labor market.
Specifically, the question is to what extent a downshift, which has been in evidence this summer, began in earnest earlier than previously known.
The Trump White House is also set to be watching closely. It could use any revisions as further fodder for its critiques of government economic data — and it may also use the results to try and shift blame for the current slowdown towards former President Joe Biden or, of course, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. ...
This week's release comes as extra attention is focused on the job market after new jobs data for the month of August, released last Friday, offered flashing red signs of a labor market slowdown. The report showed just 22,000 new jobs were added to the economy.
The political focus on jobs has also been in the spotlight more recently after Trump accused, without evidence, the BLS of having \\"phony\\" numbers and then fired the agency's commissioner — citing revisions as a key reason.
Read more here.
Here's a look at some of the top stocks trending in premarket trading:
Nebius Group (NBIS) stock rose 50% before the bell on Tuesday after announcing it had signed a AI deal with Microsoft (MSFT) worth $17.4 billion on Monday.
Fox (FOX) shares fell 4% premarket following the Murdoch family reaching a deal that will see Rupert Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan Murdoch take control of the family media empire that includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
Dell (DELL) shares fell 1% before the bell following the departure of the tech company's CFO, Yvonne McGill.
Tourmaline Bio (TRML) shares soared over 50% in premarket after Novartis (NVS, NOVN.SW) said it is buying the US company in a $1.4 billion deal.
The Swiss pharma giant will pay $48 a share for Tourmaline, with the deal expected to close in the fourth quarter.
Novartis stock slipped slightly on Wall Street and in Switzerland.
Reuters reports:
Tourmaline is focused on developing pacibekitug, a promising targeted therapy with the potential to reduce systemic inflammation, as a treatment option for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, Novartis said in a statement.
With the deal, Novartis will acquire a Phase III-ready asset that will complement its existing cardiovascular disease portfolio, it said.
Read more here.