CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Higher, Fed Puts September Rate Cut On The Table, Mortgage Rates At 6 Month Low 7/31/24

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored and reported by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Ettinger. CNBC, the Fed held interest rates steady and teed up the possibility that a rate cut could be coming in September. Stocks popped on the last day of July trading with the Dow in the green up 99 points, a quarter percent. The S&P 500 index up 85 points, one and a half percent. The NasDAQ was up 451 points. That was more than two and a half percent. And it was the NASDAQ that finished July in the red. It was the NASDAQ's first losing July in 10 years. The Dow and the S&P 500 index have had winning Julys for the past 10 years. Gold hit a new record on Wednesday, $2,473 an ounce. Facebook parent Meta knocked it out of the park in the last quarter, beating estimates on both the top and bottom lines. Shares were higher in after-hours trading. Investors liked what Fed Chair Jay Powell said about interest rates. A rate cut could be on the table at the September meeting. If inflation were to prove stickier

and we were to see higher readings from inflation, disappointing readings, we would weigh that. That's the Fed chair, Jay Powell. Computer chip stocks soared on Wednesday. Good report from Advanced Micro Devices. Some reports that ASML, big chip equipment maker, may not be subject to as onerous of restrictions as it may thought for exports to China, according to a Reuters report citing sources. NVIDIA, though, Qualcomm, some of the large cap tech names that are also seeing a big bid in the market. Even the ETF that tracks it, the ticker SMH, is up six and a half percent. CNBC's Dominic Chu, chairs of NVIDIA, were up 13 percent.

Delta Airlines CEO tells CNBC that the CrowdStrike Microsoft IT outage that forced it to leave passengers stranded for as long as a week cost the airline a half billion dollars. Delta is poised to sue the IT giants and he spoke on CNBC in Paris with our anchors. It was it was terrible. It was terrible and apologies again to our customers, our people, I mean, all of you guys. We brought so much of the production crews, the athletes over. It was just a really, really tough situation. Delta CEO Ed Bastian with the CNBC SquawkBock anchors live at the Olympics in Paris. Meantime, on Reddit, Delta customers complaining that they've been denied reimbursement from the airline

for everything from plane tickets they ended up having to buy on other airlines to get home and for hotel rooms they had to buy after sleeping on airport floors for a night or two. Mortgage rates at a six-month low as of Wednesday, 6.78% now for a 30-year fixed rate loan, according to Mortgage News Daily, the lowest since January. Mortgage rates loosely follow the rate on the 10-year Treasury, which fell as investors believe the Fed will start cutting interest rates in the next two months. On Thursday's watch list, first day of August trading, we get earnings from Amazon and Apple, plus Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Intel, Moderna, Regeneron, and Wendy's, to name a few. We find out how many people applied for unemployment benefits last week. And the NFL preseason starts Thursday night. Texans and Bears playing in the Hall of Fame game.

Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. When you're at your very top speed, it feels like you can run forever. And then there's this one moment where everybody else starts to die, and you're like, I'm not about to die. I'm about to get faster. The Olympics from Paris on NBC and Peacock.