Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Jan. 15, 2025 in New York City.
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Stocks were little changed Thursday as traders assessed the latest batch of earnings reports, with the S&P 500 looking to record its longest winning streak since December.
The broad market index traded less than 0.1% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite inched down 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 77 points, or 0.2%.
Bank of America inched higher after the company reported an earnings and revenue beat in the prior quarter. Morgan Stanley climbed 1.9% after posting a top- and bottom-line beat in the fourth quarter on strong investment banking activity and fixed income trading revenue. The results come a day after other financial peers such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs also beat fourth-quarter estimates.
The earnings season is off to a strong start overall, with 77% of the companies that have reported thus far beating expectations, per FactSet.
Wall Street is coming off its strongest session since November, with the Dow on Wednesday climbing more than 700 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied 1.8% and 2.5%, respectively. A moderate improvement in core inflation in December’s consumer price index and strong earnings from big banks spurred a risk-on rally.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield pulled back sharply from a 14-month high reached earlier in the week. It last hovered around 4.667%.
“The bond market was starting to price in the risk of further hikes, and so you get this slightly softer-than-expected inflation data, which allows you to have this big relief rally, mostly in the interest rate sensitive parts of the market,” Cameron Dawson, NewEdge Wealth’s chief investment officer, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”
“Doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily out of the woods for things like small caps, in the volatility that they’ve been experiencing,” she added. “But the sigh of relief is welcome.”
Elsewhere, Scott Bessent, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, will sit down before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Thursday morning, a hearing investors will parse for clues into tariffs and other policies from the incoming administration.
