The stock market had a record-setting week that ended high for the indices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up by 0.68%. S&P 500 closed with a gain of 0.32%, and the Nasdaq Composite closed positive by 0.20%.

The big news out of the markets yesterday was FedEx’s (FDX) continued gains after a good earnings report. The FedEx stock price rose by 11.2%, achieving far and away its best numbers for 2024 so far. This could prove to be an excellent year for this stock.

Nike (NKE) fell 6% after poor innovation efforts fell flat for the company. While 2024 could end up being a good year for the shoemaker, with a number of interesting projects to come, so far, Nike has fallen substantially from where it was at the beginning of the year.

One of the biggest losses noted for Thursday was from Lixiang Education Holding (LXEH), which fell 86%.

FOMC Meeting and the Stock Market

Remarks from the FOMC meeting on Wednesday made it clear that no interest rate cuts are happening for now. Chairman Jerome Powell said that the Federal reserve is waiting to see more progress made toward a 2% inflation rate for the US, a rate currently at 3.2%, which is up from the previous month.

High inflation will hurt the stock markets and keep them back from the kind of gains we would see otherwise. However, holding off on interest rate cuts will help the markets. We are seeing many stocks perform well right now, especially AI-related ones and a number of tech stocks, but with a lower inflation rate, the market could be booming.

Many investors are timid about putting too much into the markets at the moment for fear that inflation will rob them of profits. Expect these fears to continue and hold the markets back until inflation improves.