The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday held interest rates steady and signaled little appetite to adjust them any time soon, taking heart in continued job gains and economic growth and the likelihood that weak inflation will edge higher. Read more...

Long before he became a billionaire, Ray Dalio was a successful investor as a pre-teen. Dalio now heads Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund with roughly $160 billion in assets.But when he was only 12 years old in the early 1960s, Dalio just wanted somewhere to invest the money he’d earned caddying on a golf course and everyone he knew was talking up the stock market.

Federal Reserve officials voted to hold interest rates steady Wednesday, as a lack of inflation pressure outweighed an economy that otherwise is growing strongly. The central bank held its benchmark rate in a target between 2.25% and 2.5%, meeting market expectations though perhaps disappointing President Donald Trump, who earlier this week urged the Fed to cut the rate by 1 percentage point.READ MORE...

Wells Fargo Securities’ Christopher Harvey no longer holds the distinction of Wall Street’s biggest bear. He’s now officially one of its biggest bulls. The firm’s head of equity strategy raised his S&P 500 year-end price target Tuesday to 3,088, a 16% jump above his prior forecast of 2,665.READ MORE...

The S&P 500 reached an all-time high on Monday, but the session’s gains were kept in check as investors braced for a busy week including a flurry of corporate earnings reports, economic data and an announcement from the Federal Reserve.READ MORE..

President Donald Trump, in his most brazen attack yet on the Federal Reserve, called for the central bank on Tuesday to cut interest rates by 1 percentage point and to implement more money-printing quantitative easing.READ MORE...

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge showed no change in March and remained well below the central bank’s target, a government report Monday showed.At the same time, consumer spending surged amid a jump in expenditures on motor vehicles and health care.

Wall Street veteran Jim Paulsen believes stocks could continue to surge well past their recent recovery to the all-time highs that were last seen before the late-2018 market collapse.READ MORE...

U.S.consumer spending increased by the most in more than 9-1/2 years in March, but price pressures remained muted, with a key inflation measure posting its smallest annual gain in 14 months. Read more...

The U.S. economy likely maintained a moderate pace of growth in the first quarter, which could further dispel earlier fears of a recession even though activity was driven by temporary factors. Read more...

New orders for U.S.-made capital goods increased by the most in eight months in March, hitting their highest level on record and brightening the outlook for manufacturing and the economy. Read more...

Contrary to many forecasts, earnings growth looks like it could be positive for the first quarter, now that more than a third of the S&P 500 companies have reported.READ MORE...

The U.S. stock market got off to a strong start in 2019, and history shows Wall Street may be in store for more gains, according to data compiled by Ned Davis Research.READ MORE...

The level of debt and the lack of regulation in the corporate sector is a concern for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of its directors told CNBC. These vulnerabilities could have a wide of range implications in the event of an economic shock, Tobias Adrian, director of the monetary and capital markets department at the IMF, said Thursday.READ MORE...

job openings dropped to an 11-month low in February and hiring decreased. Job openings fell by 538,000 to a seasonally adjusted low of 7.1 million, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.That was the lowest level since March 2018 and reflected declines in several industries. The job openings rate dropped to 4.5% from 4.8% in January.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) portends a continued slowing of global economic growth. In 2017, world economic growth was peaked at 4%.It cites “considerable uncertainties in the short term, especially as advanced economy growth rates converge toward their modest long-term potential”. The latest projection on global growth also marks a downward revision from IMF’s last year prediction of 3.9% for 2019. Credit tightening measures and normalization of monetary policies by central banks of many nations have apparently led to a subdued outlook for growth this year.

U.S.employment growth accelerated from a 17-month low in March, assuaging fears of an abrupt slowdown in economic activity, but a moderation in wage gains supported the Federal Reserve’s decision to suspend further interest rate increases this year. Read more...

Growth in the U.S. services sector fell more than expected and hit its slowest pace in more than a year, according to data from the Institute for Supply Management released Wednesday. The ISM non-manufacturing index fell to 56.1 in March, the weakest print since August 2017, down from 59.7 in February.READ MORE...

Companies seem to have done a lot of hiring in March, and if Friday’s jobs report is as strong as expected, it could go a long way towards reducing speculation that a recession is coming and that the Fed will have to cut interest rates to stop it. Like every jobs report, this one is important, but economists say even more so, after the stunningly weak February report, with just 20,000 jobs created. That data added to growing concerns this winter that the economy could tip into a recession sometime in the next year.READ MORE...

The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits fell to a more than 49-year low last week, pointing to sustained labor market strength despite slowing economic growth. Read more...