U.S. stocks rose on Thursday morning, thereby giving hope to the possibility of the S&P 500 snapping its five-day losing streak. The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, while the Dow Jones was up by 130 points, which is around 0.4% as well.
The S&P 500’s losing streak led to the blue-chip index amassing total losses of 3.6% at the beginning of December. At the same time, the Nasdaq was down 4.4%; its worst first week of December since 1975.
Currently, a sustained interest rate hike and signs of an impending recession have led to skepticism in what is historically a positive month for stocks. Simultaneously, unemployment filings increased last week with initial jobless claims for the week ending December 3 standing at 230,000; a rise of 4,000 from the previous week.
Investor focus is now shifted toward the Federal Reserve’s final rate-setting meeting of 2022.
“We do not yet think the Federal Open Markets Committee is ready to signal the end of rate hikes is coming soon, but mathematically with the dot plot in hand, the December step toward ‘sufficiently restrictive’ will put them just 75 bps away from the Summary of Economic Projections’ (SEP) median terminal rate,” UBS economist Jonathan Pingle said of the upcoming meeting.