Stocks Gain Ground Ahead of Inflation Data, Fed Meeting

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published 12 June 2023

Stocks closed higher Monday ahead of tomorrow's highly anticipated release of the May consumer price index (CPI) report and Wednesday's policy announcement from the Federal Reserve.

While market participants kept a cautious eye on these two upcoming events, some single-stock news, including Tesla's (TSLA) longest win streak on record and a pre-earnings upgrade for Oracle (ORCL), was also in focus.

The major market indexes carried last week's modest gains into today's session. At the close, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.5% at 13,461, the S&P 500 was 0.9% higher at 4,338, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had gained 0.6% to 34,066.

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Optimism continues to reign on Wall Street, says Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. This upbeat mood is being driven by anticipation that the Fed will "hold interest rates steady at its meeting this week and that the economy may still be able to emerge from the central bank's 14-month rate hike cycle without slipping into recession," Schutte notes.

The futures market is currently pricing in 77% chance the Federal Reserve will pause when it concludes its meeting on Wednesday, according to CME Group. However, there's a 56% probability for a quarter-point rate hike at the next Fed meeting in July.

Monday's major stock movers: Carnival, Tesla, Oracle

In single-stock news, Carnival (CCL) popped 12.5% after the consumer discretionary stock was upgraded to the equivalent of Buy at JPMorgan and BofA Securities, with both firms citing continued demand strength in the cruise industry. Most analysts are already upbeat toward CCL stock. Of the 21 analysts following Carnival tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, nine say it's a Strong Buy, three have it at Buy, six call it a Hold and three rate it a Strong Sell. This works out to a consensus recommendation of Buy.

Tesla was another notable mover, rising 2.2%. This marked the 12th straight gain for TSLA stock – its longest daily win streak on record – a time frame that's seen shares surge roughly 35%.

Meanwhile, Oracle jumped 6.1% after Wolfe Research analyst Alex Zukin upgraded the tech stock to Outperform from Peer Perform, the equivalents of Buy and Hold, respectively. Zukin believes the company's Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) division could double its market share by 2024 due in part to having "an early moving advantage" in generative artificial intelligence. ORCL is up another 3.5% in after-hours trading after reporting a top-line beat.

Adobe stock rises ahead of earnings

ORCL wasn't the only stock rallying ahead of earnings. Adobe (ADBE), which will disclose its quarterly results after Thursday's close, soared 4.5% today. The Photoshop parent could be poised to become a top AI stock, say several Wall Street pros, including Oppenheimer analyst Brian Schwartz.

"Adobe is deepening the competitive moat with Firefly, its generative AI engine," Schwartz wrote in a note to clients. "Firefly has the capacity to dispel the bear case over digital media penetration and a future of only average industry revenue growth for Adobe." Still, the analyst has a Perform rating on ADBE, or the equivalent of Hold, due to "valuation after a large move up in the stock price after a good software market rally recently."

Indeed, shares are up more than 40% in the last three months, though this is hardly anything new for ADBE. Not only has Adobe been a recent market-beater, but it's turned in a jaw-dropping return for those who invested $1,000 in the software stock 20 years ago.

With over a decade of experience writing about the stock market, Karee Venema is the senior investing editor at Kiplinger.com. She joined the publication in April 2021 after 10 years of working as an investing writer and columnist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. In her previous role, Karee focused primarily on options trading, as well as technical, fundamental and sentiment analysis.