Stocks slipped lower Thursday even as fresh housing market data helped ease some looming recession concerns. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked below the flatline, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite lost about 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively.
Here's how the market settled on Thursday:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
Market participants are also still digesting the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy decision issued Wednesday afternoon. While policymakers kept the federal funds rate target range between 4.25% to 4.5% -- which was broadly expected by Wall Street -- investors were encouraged by a forecast for two rate cuts this year.
Moreover, while the central bank raised its inflation outlook to 2.8% in 2025, it expects the price pressure to decline back to 2.2% and then 2% in the next two years, indicating that tariff impacts on the economy may be short-lived.
"It can be the case that it's appropriate sometimes to look through inflation, if it's going to go away quickly, without action by us, if it's transitory," Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during his post-meeting remarks on Wednesday. "That can be the case in the case of tariff inflation. I think that would depend on the tariff inflation moving through fairly quickly and, critically, as well on inflation expectations being well anchored."
Offering another bright spot, Previously Owned U.S. Home Sales rose by a much more than expected 4.2% in February to a seasonally adjusted 4.26 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) report on Thursday. Economists had expected month-to-month sales to decline as much as 3% as mortgage rates rose throughout the month.
Sales were 1.2% lower annually in February, with sales around the median price range down 3% year-over-year.
"Home buyers are slowly entering the market," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, in a release. "Mortgage rates have not changed much, but more inventory and choices are releasing pent-up housing demand."
In the News:
Longtime Tesla
The Wedbush analyst believes Musk needs to first formally announce how he is going to balance his leadership roles as head of the electric carmaker and the White House's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) -- highlighting that current perception is that he is spending "110% of his time at DOGE."
"Musk needs to make a statement and his actions speak louder than words. We would expect this to happen either before or during the 1Q earnings conference call in early May," Ives wrote in a note.
Second, Musk must give a "roadmap," for the lower-priced EVs Tesla has been promising since last year and that are slated for production in 2025, Ives said. Moreover, Ives said Musk should provide more information about the unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) Robotaxi rollout for Austin, Texas, which is expected for June.
