Cheston is due to start as the new chief executive of youth jewellery retailer Lovisa next year. Lovisa shares are 1.2 per cent lower.
Overnight, the S&P 500 rallied 1.2 per cent, though it didn’t recoup all of its drop from Friday, let alone from the rest of the four-day losing streak that it broke. The Dow Jones rose 484 points, or 1.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1.2 per cent.
Boeing climbed 3.4 per cent after reaching a tentative deal with its largest union on a new contract that, if ratified, will avoid a strike that threatened to shut down aircraft production by the end of the week. Boeing said 33,000 workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would get pay raises of 25 per cent over the four-year contract.
Nvidia and other Big Tech companies also returned to their long-held position of leading the market, at least briefly. Nvidia climbed 3.5 per cent and was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward. That cut into its 13.9 per cent tumble last week, as questions continued about whether its stock price went too high in investors’ frenzy around artificial intelligence, even if Nvidia has continued to top analysts’ expectations for growth.
The Federal Reserve has been intentionally pressing the brakes on the economy through high interest rates in order to stifle high inflation. It’s about to start lowering rates later this month, which would ease the pressure on the economy, as it turns its focus toward protecting the job market and avoiding a recession. The question on Wall Street is if the Fed’s shift in focus will prove to be too late.
Cuts to interest rates give stock prices a boost, but if an economic downturn does hit, it could more than offset such a benefit by dragging down profits for companies. That’s what happened in 2007, for example, when the Great Recession wrecked the global economy and financial markets.
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“Today, the absence of glaring household or corporate balance sheet vulnerabilities means Fed easing should be enough to prevent recession, and should provide investors some optimism for the future of the market,” suggests Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.
Apple’s stock was virtually flat after the company unveiled its latest iPhone model, the 16. It’s the first model to be tailored specifically for artificial intelligence, with expected improvements to its often dim-witted virtual assistant, Siri.
With AP