Wall Street holds steady as Exxon Mobil climbs and AutoZone falls

NEW YORK AP U S stocks are holding relatively steady on Tuesday as Wall Street waits to hear what the Federal Reserve will say on Wednesday about where interest rates are heading The S P rose in morning trading coming off just its second loss in the last days The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up points or as of a m Eastern time and the Nasdaq composite was lower Exxon Mobil was the strongest force lifting the S P It climbed after increasing its forecast for profit over the next five years thanks in part to strength for its fields in the Permian basin in the United States and off Guyana s shore CVS Vitality rose after unveiling new financial forecasts including expectations for annual compounded advance in earnings per share at a mid-teens percentage over the next three years We are committed to doing what we say stated Chief Financial Officer Brian Newman who also noted CVS Physical condition is closing out with strong momentum They helped work against a drop for homebuilder Toll Brothers and a fall for AutoZone which both published weaker results for the latest quarter than analysts expected Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley Jr noted demand for new homes remains soft across multiple markets But he pointed to how his company s luxury homes aim more at affluent customers who may be less hurt by affordability pressures than other prospective homebuyers One big factor in that affordability question is mortgage rates They re lower than they were at the start of the year but they perked up a bit after October That s largely because of questions in the bond domain about how much more the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate The widespread expectation is that the Fed will cut interest rates Wednesday afternoon which would be the third such easing of the year Lower interest rates can give the commercial sector and prices for investments a boost but the downside is they can worsen inflation The U S stock territory has run to the edge of its records in part because of high expectations that the Fed will cut rates again on Wednesday The big question is what the Fed will say about where interest rates will go after that A great number of on Wall Street are bracing for talk aimed at tamping down expectations for more cuts in Inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed s target and Fed functionaries are notably split in their opinions about whether high inflation or the slowing job arena is the bigger threat to the financial sector Treasury yields climbed in the bond domain after a record on Tuesday evidenced that U S employers were advertising million job openings at the end of October That s up a smidgen from the month before and the highest since May If the job arena is not worsening it may not need as much help from the Fed through more cuts to rates The yield on the -year Treasury erased what had been a dip after the assessment on job openings came out to sit at where it was late Monday The yield on the two-year Treasury which moves more closely with expectations for what the Fed will do rose to from late Monday Elsewhere on Wall Street Ares Management climbed after S P Dow Jones Indices declared the resources company will join its widely followed S P index It will replace Kellanova the maker of Pringles and Pop-Tarts which is being bought by Mars the company behind Snickers and M Ms Home Depot flipped an early loss and added It gave a preliminary forecast for that reported the broad home improvement field may shrink by up to But it also gave a separate set of forecasts saying its earnings per share could grow in the mid- to high-single digit percentages if the housing sector recovers The industry s the bulk influential stock Nvidia slipped after President Donald Trump allowed it to sell an advanced chip used in artificial-intelligence system to approved customers in China The H is not Nvidia s top product In stock markets abroad indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia Indexes fell in Hong Kong and in Paris for two of the world s bigger moves