US stocks gain after benign inflation data, oil prices retreat

NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks advanced Thursday (Aug 13) with the S&P 500 finishing at a fresh record as investors welcomed further signs of easing US inflation while oil prices pulled back.

The Producer Price Index in July was flat on a month-on-month basis, while it rose 4.7 per cent from a year ago, down from a 5.5 per cent increase in June.

The reading, which followed a benign consumer inflation reading Wednesday, bolstered expectations that Federal Reserve officials would not feel obliged to raise borrowing costs quickly.

"A September interest rate hike - as we've been forecasting - is now looking unlikely," said Stephen Brown, an economist at Capital Economics.

Still, market watchers are on guard about the risk of persistent inflation.

The US Treasury Department's auction Thursday for the 30-year bond drew the highest yield since 2001 at 5.216 per cent.

All three major US indices finished higher, with the broad-based S&P 500 up 0.7 per cent at 7,798.99, a new record.

Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management said the two reports on inflation "seem to be fine" but cautioned against reading too much into the market's current dynamics.

"This has been the slowest week of the summer in terms of overall volumes, so it's hard to put a lot of credibility in any of the moves that we've seen," Hogan said. "We're kind of grinding higher, but not with any enthusiastic volume."

Earlier, Seoul's Kospi jumped 3.6 per cent thanks to chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung as investors returned to AI names.

The South Korean index had tumbled 40 per cent by early August since hitting a record high in June. It has since recovered by about 20 per cent.

London's stock market was hit as shares in heavyweight mining companies retreated after copper giant Antofagasta downgraded its production outlook.

Oil prices slipped after recent gains amid uncertainty over the prospects for Gulf shipments from the Strait of Hormuz, with both US President Donald Trump and Iran claiming control of the key waterway.

Among individual companies, Dow component Cisco fell 8.4 per cent despite reporting better-than-expected results on growth connected to artificial intelligence.

A UBS note said the pullback in Cisco shares likely reflected concerns about a possible slowdown in profit margins but called any retreat "an attractive buying opportunity."

But Netflix jumped 5.4 per cent after Bill Ackman's Pershing Square disclosed a stake in the streaming company.