Stock market indices recorded strong growth

On Monday, the Dow Jones index climbed 1.11 percent to 34,246 points. The S&P 500 noted an expansion of 1.15 percent, 4,137 points, and the Nasdaq index 1.48 percent, to 11,891 points.

Share prices increased in ten of the eleven most significant sectors of the S&P 500 index, and only the energy sector declined.

Prices rose the most in the I.T. sector, by an average of 1.8 percent. Meta’s shares had the biggest growth, with a price jump of around three percent, after headlines in the media that it is preparing a new round of layoffs to reduce operating costs. This boosted the entire technology sector, with share prices of Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft rising between one and three percent.

Investors are hoping for a favorable U.S. inflation report.

In a Reuters poll, analysts, on average expected consumer prices to rise 0.5 percent month-on-month in January. On an annual basis, price growth could amount to 6.2 percent, while in December last year, it was 6.5 percent.

Investors hope inflation could weaken faster than expected, which would prompt the Fed to end the cycle of interest rate hikes soon.

Focus of investors

In the money market, it is currently estimated that the final interest rate, i.e., the interest rate at which the Fed would end the process of increasing the money price, will reach 5.1 percent by July.

The quarterly business results of companies are also the focus of investors. Nearly 69 percent of companies from the arrangement of the S&P 500 index, which have issued reports so far, achieved a higher profit than anticipated in the last quarter of last year.

However, analysts polled by Reuters estimated that the company’s earnings fell by around three percent annually.