Stocks rose again on Tuesday as market volatility to have settled after a choppy start to the year. The Nasdaq led gains, rising over 1.4% to build on its rally from the previous session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also ended the day higher, climbing over 0.5% and 0.9%, respectively.
Here's how the market settled Tuesday:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
Fed Powell testifies before Senate:
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Tuesday as part of his re-confirmation process. In his testimony, Powell said the U.S. economy is both health enough and in need of a tighter monetary policy moving into the new year.
"As we move through this year...if things develop as expected, we'll be normalizing policy, meaning we're going to end our asset purchases in March, meaning we'll be raising rates over the course of the year," Powell told lawmakers, quoted by CNBC. "At some point perhaps later this year we will start to allow the balance sheet to run off, and that's just the road to normalizing policy."
Powell said that the central bank's hawkish tones are in response to an economy with a stronger labor market facing spiking inflation rates.
"What that's really telling us is that the economy no longer needs or wants the very high accommodative policies that we've had in place to deal with the pandemic and its aftermath," Powell said, quoted by CNBC. "We're really just going to be moving over the course of this year to a policy that it closer to normal, but it's a long road to normal from where we are."
United Airlines trims schedule in response to COVID outbreaks amongst employees:
United Airlines
Kirby said United is "reducing our near-term schedules to make sure we have the staffing and resources to take care of customers." Kirby noted that about 4% of its U.S. workforce are currently COVID positive. "Just as an example, in one day alone at Newark, nearly one-third of our workforce called out sick," Kirby said.
However, Kirby said that none of United's vaccinated employees, which make up more than 96% of its staff, are hospitalized due to their infection. Moreover, the carrier has not had a single COVID-related death in eight weeks.
Here's how market benchmarks started trading soon after open:
S&P 500 Index: -0.00% or -0.07 points to 4,670.22
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.06% or +21.91 points to 36,090.78
Nasdaq Composite Index: +0.05% or +6.93 points to 14,942.83
