Wall Street ends sharply higher as Waller remarks ease rate hike fears

Wall Street experienced a sharp rise on September 3 as investors reduced their expectations for interest rate hikes following remarks by US Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller. Waller stated that he would support keeping the Fed funds target rate steady if data indicated that inflationary pressures were easing. All three major US stock indexes closed at least 1 percent higher, with the Nasdaq gaining from the "Magnificent Seven" group of AI-related megacap stocks.

Following Waller's comments, market expectations for rate hikes at the Fed's September meeting decreased to 50.4 percent from 63.2 percent on September 2, according to CME's FedWatch tool. The benchmark US Treasury yield fell for the second consecutive session, while rate-hike expectations had spiked due to global bond selloffs driven by inflation, debt, and geopolitical concerns.

Wall Street analysts noted that Waller's comments provided a broad lift for markets, with some sectors like semiconductors and software showing mixed results. Economic reports on September 3 were generally positive, with low jobless claims and a stronger service sector. However, services input prices reached their highest level since October 2022, and the international trade gap widened by 24.4 percent.

The following day, the Labor Department was expected to release the August employment report, which was anticipated to show a 56,000 job gain in the US economy, keeping the unemployment rate steady at 4.1 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 624.16 points, or 1.18 percent, to 53,686.11, while the S&P 500 gained 81.11 points, or 1.06 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 366.23 points, or 1.4 percent.

Nvidia rose 1.8 percent after acquiring developer platform Hugging Face for US$12.9 billion to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic, while chipmaker Broadcom dropped 2.7 percent following weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue forecasts.