Stocks rose Tuesday as Wall Street shook off more hawkish comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to rally higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped over 400 points, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite climbed over 1.3% and 2.7% higher, respectively.
Uncertainty surrounding the central bank's moves to curb inflation has pulled market benchmarks lower over the past couple weeks. The S&P 500 now sits about 14% below its all-time high reached on Jan. 3, while the Dow is about 10% off its record from the same period. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has fallen into bear market territory, trading over 20% below its record closing price from last November.
Here's how the market settled on Tuesday:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
Powell says Fed will continue to raise rates until inflation comes down:
Fed Chair Powell reaffirmed the his hawkish stance toward combating inflation, telling The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that more 50-basis point interest rate hikes are likely to come until prices start to fall back towards a healthy level.
"If that involves moving past broadly understood levels of neutral [the Fed] won't hesitant to do that," Powell told The WSJ in a live streamed interview. "We will go until we feel we're at a place where we can say financial conditions are in an appropriate place, we see inflation coming down."
Powell said he is committed to bring inflation level closer to the central bank's target of 2%, and cautioned that this effort could come at the expense of the United States' decades low unemployment rate of 3.6%.
"You'd still have a strong labor market if unemployment were to move up a few ticks," Powell said. "I would say there are a number of plausible paths to have a soft as I said softish landing. Our job isn't to handicap the odds, it's to try to achieve that."
Netflix to reportedly layoff 150 employees to cut business expenses:
Netflix
"As we explained on earrings, our slowing revenue growth meanings we are also having to slow out cost growth as a company," a Netflix representative told CNBC on Tuesday. "So sadly, we are letting around 150 employees go today, mostly U.S.-based. These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say good be to such great colleagues. We're working hard to support them through this very difficult transition."
Retail spending remained strong in April:
Consumers continued to spend in April, with U.S. retail sales rising nearly in-line with Wall Street estimates despite ongoing inflationary pressures on prices.
Retail sales rose 0.9% in April, according to the Commerce Department's report published Tuesday, just a tick below the 0.1% expected by Bloomberg consensus. The month's spending was boosted by increases sales of cars, electronics and at restaurants. Excluding auto sales, retail spending was up 0.6%, exceeding estimates of 0.4%.
One a year-over-year basis, sales rose 8.2% overall and 10.9% excluding autos.
Moreover, March's spending was revised higher in the latest print, with the month posting a gain of 1.4% from the 0.5% increase previously reported. Excluding autos, March's sales were revised to 2.1% from 1.1% originally reported.
Here's how benchmarks started trading after market open:
S&P 500 Index: +1.56% or +62.72 points to 4,070.73
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +1.40% or +450.12 points to 32,673.54
Nasdaq Composite Index: +2.07% or +240.94 points to 11,903.73
