Stocks are bursting toward their best day in years Thursday as exhilaration sweeps Wall Street and financial markets worldwide after a report showed inflation in the United States slowed last month by even more than expected.
The S&P 500 was 4.1% higher in morning trading, and the encouraging data also sent prices leaping in markets for everything from metals to European stocks. Even bitcoin clawed back some of its steep plunge from prior days caused by the crypto industry’s latest crisis of confidence.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 852 points, or 2.6%, at 33,366, as of 10:44 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite soared 5.5%. Investors took the data as a sign that the worst of high inflation may finally be behind us, though analysts cautioned it was still premature to declare victory.
Russia said its troops began pulling out of a strategic Ukrainian city on Thursday amid growing signs it was following through on a retreat that would mark a turning point in the grinding war.
Ukrainian officials acknowledged Moscow’s forces had no choice but to flee Kherson but remained cautious, fearing an ambush. It was difficult to know what was happening in the industrial port city, from which tens of thousands have fled in recent weeks and where remaining residents are frightened to leave their homes.
A forced pullout from Kherson — the only provincial capital Moscow has captured — would mark one of Russia’s worst setbacks yet, recalling their retreat from Kyiv in the early days of the war. Recapturing Kherson could allow Ukraine to win back lost territory in the south, including Crimea, which Moscow illegally seized in 2014.
A Russian retreat is also almost certain to raise domestic pressure on the Kremlin to escalate the conflict — which U.S. assessments showed may have already left tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead or wounded.
Tropical Storm Nicole hit Florida as a hurricane Thursday, washing away the remaining protections for a stretch of beachfront properties that lost their seawall during Hurricane Ian only weeks before. In Daytona Beach Shores, surging ocean water threatened the foundations of at least a dozen high-rise condos and houses.
Nicole remains a sprawling tropical storm, covering nearly the entire weather-weary state of Florida early Thursday while also reaching into Georgia and the Carolinas. Damaging winds extended as far as 450 miles (720 kilometers) from the center in some directions as Nicole turned northward over central Florida Thursday morning.
Tiffany Johnson can be reached at john2730@stthomas.edu.