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Walmart posts strong quarter, raises financial outlook

Summary

  • reports strong sales and profits, topping forecasts
  • Retailer raises ahead of holiday season
  • Company moving its stock listing from NYSE to Nasdaq
  • CEO plans early retirement after tech-focused shift

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart delivered another standout quarter, posting strong sales and profits that blew past Wall Street expectations as it wins over more cash-strapped Americans who have grown increasing anxious about the economy.

With other retailers dialing back projections, the nation’s largest retailer raised its financial outlook Thursday after its strong third quarter, setting itself up for a strong season.

Walmart Inc., based in Bentonville, Arkansas, also said Thursday that it will be transferring the listing of its common stock to the tech-heavy Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange. It expects its common stock to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on December 9, under the the same ticker symbol “WMT.”

CEO Doug McMillon, who surprised investors last week with plans to retire early next year, has reshaped Walmart itself as tech-powered giant that has leaned heavily into automation and artificial intelligence.

McMillon spearheaded a period of robust sales growth since becoming chief executive in 2014, going toe-to-toe with online behemoth Amazon. John Furner, 51, the head of Walmart’s U.S. operations, will take over on Feb. 1, the day after McMillon’s retirement becomes effective.

The leadership change arrives at a challenging time for U.S. companies that have spent months navigating an uncertain economic environment as President Donald Trump imposes wide-ranging tariffs on imports and pursues an immigration crackdown that threatens to shrink the number of workers available in America.

Walmart’s performance serves as a barometer of consumer spending given its size and vast customer base. The company maintains that 90% of U.S. households rely on Walmart for a range of products, and more than 150 million customers shop on its website or in its stores every week.

“We’re gaining market share, improving delivery speed, and managing inventory well, McMillon said in prepared remarks. “We’re well-positioned for a strong finish to the year and beyond that.”

That compares with a mixed performance from other retailers so far this quarter.

Target’s third-quarter profit tumbled as the retailer struggled to lure shoppers that are being pressed by stubbornly high inflation. The Minneapolis company said Wednesday that it expects its sales slump to extend through the critical holiday shopping season.

The most recent quarter is the latest challenge for incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke, a 20-year company veteran who is replacing CEO Brian Cornell in February.

Home Depot, which reported its third-quarter results on Tuesday, was mixed with fewer violent storms reaching shore, more anxiety among U.S. consumers and a housing market that is in a deep funk. The company lowered its fiscal 2025 adjusted forecast but raised its expectations for sales growth.

TJX, which operates HomeGoods and TJ Maxx, continues to lure frugal shoppers. On Wednesday, it upgraded its full-year outlook and turned in higher profit and sales during the recent quarter.

Walmart, too, has been laser-focused on maintaining low prices while the company under McMillon deploys new technologies, from artificial intelligence to robotics. Walmart has also invested heavily in e-commerce and faster deliveries.

Walmart has also sought out new sources of revenue like advertising and launched a membership program called Walmart + to compete with Amazon Prime.

Those efforts have paid off.

Third-quarter profits rose to $6.14 billion, or 77 cents per share, in the quarter ended Oct. 31. Adjusted earnings were 66 cents, or 6 cents better than Wall Street had expected, according to a poll by FactSet. That is far greater than the $4.58 billion, or 57 cents per share, the company earned in the same period last year.

Sales rose nearly 6% to $179.5 billion, also exceeding the expectations of most analysts.

Comparable sales at Walmart stores — those from sales from established physical stores and online channels— rose 4.5% in the third quarter, just shy of last quarter’s 4.6%.

The number of transactions at Walmart stores rose 1.8%, while the average transaction size rose 2.7%.

Global e-commerce sales rose 27%. That follows a 25% jump in the second quarter and a 22% growth in the first quarter.

The company said that it now expects adjusted profits this year to be in the range of $2.58 to $2.63, up from guidance in August of between $2.52 and $2.62 per share.

Walmart expects sales for the year to be up anywhere from 4.8% to 5.1%. That’s up from its earlier estimates of 3.75% to 4.75%.

Analysts were predicting $2.61 per share, according to FactSet analysts.

Shares were essentially flat before the opening bell Thursday.

Verizon to cut 13,000 jobs in major restructuring

Summary

  • laying off more than 13,000 employees
  • Cuts represent about 20% of
  • CEO says cost structure limits investment
  • Company also reducing outsourced labor expenses

NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees in mass job reductions that arrive as the telecommunications giant says it must “reorient” its entire company.

The jobs cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen by The Associated Press, Schulman said Verizon’s current cost structure “limits” the company’s ability to invest — pointing particularly to customer experiences.

“We must reorient our entire company around delivering for and delighting our customers,” Schulman wrote. He added that the company needed to simplify its operations “to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.”

Verizon had nearly 100,000 full-time employees as of the end of last year, according to securities filings. A spokesperson confirmed that the announced Thursday account for about 20% of the company’s management workforce, which isn’t unionized.

Verizon has faced rising competition in both the wireless phone and home internet space — particularly from AT&T, T-Mobile and other big market players. New leadership at the company has stressed the need to right the company’s direction.

Schulman took the CEO seat just last month. In the company’s most recent , he stated that Verizon’s trajectory was at a “critical inflection point” — and said, rather than incremental changes, Verizon would “aggressively transform” its operations.

For its third quarter of 2025, Verizon posted earnings of $4.95 billion and $33.82 billion in revenue. The carrier reported continued subscriber growth for its prepaid wireless services, but it lost a net 7,000 postpaid connections.

News of coming layoffs at Verizon were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. The outlet says that the 13,000 job cuts mark the largest-ever round of layoffs at the company.

Beyond the cuts across Verizon’s workforce, Schulman said that the New York company would also “significantly reduce” its outsourced and other outside labor expenses.

It’s a tough time for the job market overall — and Verizon isn’t the only company to announce sizeable workforce reductions recently. More and more layoffs have piled up at companies like Amazon, UPS, Nestlé and more.

Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from U.S. President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or are redirecting money to artificial intelligence. Regardless, such cuts have raised worker anxieties across sectors.

Schulman on Thursday recognized that “changes in technology and in the economy are impacting the workforce across all industries.” He said that Verizon had established a $20 million “Reskilling and Career Transition Fund” for workers departing the company.

Shares for Verizon were essentially flat Thursday.

US employers added surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September

Summary

  • U.S. employers added 119,000 jobs in September
  • Job gains more than doubled economists’ 50,000 forecast
  • rose to 4.4% from 4.3%
  • August jobs were revised downward by 26,000

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal .

The increase in was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast.

Yet there were some troubling details in the delayed report.

revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August instead of gaining 22,000 as originally reported. Altogether, revisions shaved 33,000 jobs off July and August payrolls. The economy had also shed jobs in June, the first time since the 2020 pandemic that the monthly has gone negative twice.

And more than 87% of the September job gains were concentrated in two industries: healthcare and social assistance and leisure and hospitality.

“We’ve got these strong headline numbers, but when you look underneath that you’ll see that a lot of that is driven by healthcare,” said Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. ”At the end of the day, the question is: Can you support an economic expansion on the back of one industry? Anybody would have a hard time arguing everybody should become a nurse.”

The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The jobless rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the — either working or looking for work — in September and not all of them found jobs right away.

The data, though late, was welcomed by businesses, investors, policymakers and the . During the 43-day shutdown, they’d been groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldn’t collect the data.

The report comes at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high and uncertainty around Trump’s erratic campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. But economic growth at midyear was resilient.

Healthcare and social assistance firms added more than 57,000 jobs in September, restaurants and bars 37,000, construction companies 19,000 and retailers almost 14,000. But factories shed 6,000 jobs — the fifth straight monthly drop. The federal government, targeted by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE cost cutters, lost 3,000 jobs, the eighth straight monthly decline..

Average hourly wages rose just 0.2% from August and 3.8% from a year earlier, edging closer to the 3.5% year-over-year increase that the Federal Reserve’s inflation fighters like to see.

The latest reading on jobs Thursday makes a rate cut by the Fed officials at their next meeting in December less likely. Many were already leaning against a cut next month, according to minutes of their October meeting released Wednesday. Steady hiring suggests the economy doesn’t need lower interest rates to expand.

The September jobs report will be the last one the Fed will see before its Dec. 9-10 meeting. Officials are split between those who see stubbornly high inflation as the main challenge they need to address by keeping rates elevated, and those who are more concerned that hiring is sluggish and needs to be supported by rate reductions.

Hiring has been strained this year by the lingering effects of high interest rates engineered to fight a 2021-2022 spike in inflation and uncertainty around Trump’s campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and on specific products — from copper to foreign films.

Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported. Since March, job creation has fallen farther — to an average 59,000 a month.

With September numbers out, businesses, investors, policymakers and the Fed will have to wait awhile to get another good look at the numbers behind the American labor market.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that it won’t won’t release a full jobs report for October because it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate during the government shutdown.

Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data — including the number of jobs that employers created last month — along with the full November jobs report on Dec. 16, a couple of weeks late.

The 2025 job market has been marked by an awkward pairing: relatively weak hiring but few , meaning that Americans who have work mostly enjoy job security – but those who don’t often struggle to find employment.

Megan Fridenmaker, 28, lost her job last month as a writer for a podcast network in Indianapolis. She’s applied for at least 200 jobs and landed just one interview. “I am far from the only unemployed person in my friend group,” she said. “Where the job market’s at right now – people will apply for hundreds and hundreds (of jobs) before getting one interview.”

“Out of everything I’ve applied for, I get a response from maybe a quarter of them,” she said. “And the vast majority of the responses are the automated – ‘Thank you so much, but we’ve gone with another candidate.’ ‘Thank you so much, but we’ve already filled the position.’

“The whole job-hunting experience has felt so cold and so distant and so removed from who we are as humans.”

US existing home sales rise as mortgage rates ease

Summary

  • rose 1.2% in October to a 4.10M annual rate
  • Sales increased 1.7% from the same month last year
  • Median U.S. home price climbed 2.1% to $415,200
  • Lower boosted demand despite affordability challenges

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes increased last month to the fastest pace since February as lower mortgage rates helped pull more homebuyers into the market.

Existing home sales rose 1.2% in October from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.10 million units, the said Thursday.

Sales climbed 1.7% compared with October last year. The latest sales figure topped the roughly 4.09 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.

October’s home sales were likely limited by the federal , which could have delayed some transactions that would have closed last month.

The national median sales price increased 2.1% in October from a year earlier to $415,200, an all-time high for any October on data going back to 1999. have risen on an annual basis for 28 months in a row.

The has been in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Sales have remained sluggish this year, but have gotten a boost this fall as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage declined to its lowest level in more than a year.

Even so, affordability remains a challenge for many aspiring homeowners after years of skyrocketing home prices. Uncertainty over the economy and job market are also remain significant hurdles for many aspiring homeowners after years of skyrocketing home prices.

That’s kept existing U.S. home sales stuck at around a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023. Historically, sales have typically hovered around 5.2 million a year.

To close that gap will take a drastic increase in the number of homes on the market and a more meaningful decline in mortgage rates, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, whose 2026 forecast calls for a 14% increase in home sales.

“I don’t think we will get there next year,” Yun said. “We need 1 million more home sales to get us back to normal. I’m only looking at an additional half-million home sales next year.”

That shortage of homes for sale, especially in the more affordable end of the market, continues to weigh especially on first-time homebuyers, who don’t have home equity gains to put toward a new home purchase. They accounted for 34% of homes sales last month. Historically, they made up 40% of home sales.

An annual survey of homebuyers by NAR showed first-time buyers accounted for an all-time low 21% of home purchases between July 2024 and June 2025, while the average age of such homebuyers rose to a record-high of 40.

The Trump administration recently said it is considering backing a 50-year mortgage to help alleviate the home affordability crisis, though the announcement drew swift criticism from many economists and policymakers.

Homes purchased last month likely went under contract in August and September, when the average rate on a 30-year mortgage ranged from 6.63% to 6.26%, according to Freddie Mac. The decline in mortgage rates accelerated in October, pulling the average rate down to 6.17% — its lowest level since Oct. 3, 2024. It has ticked higher in the weeks since then.

Home shoppers who can afford to buy at current mortgage rates are benefiting from a wider selection of properties on the market this year than a year ago.

There were 1.52 million unsold homes at the end of last month, down 0.7% from September and up 10.9% from October last year, NAR said. However, the latest inventory snapshot remains well below the roughly 2 million homes for sale that was typical before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To the degree pre-Covid conditions were more normal, we are still tight on inventory,” said Yun.

October’s month-end inventory translates to a 4.4-month supply at the current sales pace. Traditionally, a 5- to 6-month supply is considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers.

Still, homes are taking longer to sell. Properties typically remained on the market for 34 days last month before selling, NAR said.

The longer homes linger on the market, the more pressure it puts on homeowners eager to sell to give buyers a better deal.

U.S. jobless claims fall as filings return after shutdown

Summary

  • fell 8,000 to 220,000 for the week of Nov. 15.
  • First unemployment data released since the Oct. 1 shutdown.
  • Four-week average dropped to 224,250.
  • Continuing claims rose to 1.97 million, up 28,000.

New U.S. jobless claim applications fell last week, remaining within the healthy range of recent years, according to the government’s first weekly layoffs data since before the government shut down on Oct. 1.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the week ending Nov. 15 fell by 8,000 from the previous week to 220,000, the reported Thursday.

Data for the weeks covering the also remained in the same range of recent years, falling between 200,000 and 250,000.

Also Thursday, the Labor Department said in a separate report that U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September. The rose to 4.4%, the highest since October 2021, however that’s partly because 470,000 people entered the .

The increase in September was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labor Department revisions shaved 33,000 jobs off July and August payrolls.

The monthly — considered the most important market-moving data on the U.S. employment situation — had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown.

During the 43-day shutdown, investors, businesses, policymakers and the were without much of the figures they use to diagnose the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldn’t collect the data.

Thursday’s labor market reports come at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high and uncertainty around Trump’s erratic tariff policies, though economic growth at midyear was resilient.

Fed policymakers are divided over whether to cut interest rates for the third time this year when they meet in December for the final time this year.

Some major companies have announced job cuts this year, including Procter & Gamble, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Google and Facebook parent company Meta. Intel and The Walt Disney Co. also recently announced staff reductions, as have , General Motors, American Airlines and Amazon.

Thursday’s report on weekly layoffs showed that the four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 3,000 to 224,250.

The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 8 jumped to 1.97 million, an increase of 28,000 from the previous week.

Harris Teeter to lay off 91 Fairfax County employees

SUMMARY:

  • will close its Franconia in February
  • 91 employees will be laid off
  • State has about 133,000 unserved addresses to connect
  • Parent company Kroger earlier this year announced plans to close 60 underperforming stores

North Carolina-based supermarket chain Harris Teeter will permanently close a fulfillment center in on Feb. 1, 2026, resulting in of 91 employees.

Harris Teeter notified the state of the closure and layoffs on Tuesday, in compliance with the (WARN) Act. In the letter, the company’s vice president of human resources, Martha Taylor, said that the closure of the site at 6306 Gravel Ave. in Franconia is expected to be permanent and that Harris Teeter’s delivery operations from that facility may begin to wind down in early to mid-January 2026.

“After thorough evaluation and strategic review, we made the difficult decision to close the Virginia facility that supported HT Delivery,” the company said in a statement to Virginia Business.

The facility is located within Fleet Industrial Park, a 489,372-square-foot business park consisting of eight industrial warehouse buildings.

While the company did not directly address the factors that led to the decision to close the Franconia site, its statement indicated that it was related to shifting away from company-based delivery to third-party providers.

“Harris Teeter customers can continue to enjoy delivery through our well-established third-party delivery providers, with the same access to their favorite products and the personalized offers and savings they expect from Harris Teeter,” the statement read.

According to Taylor, affected employees will remain employed through Feb. 1 and will receive pay and benefits as usual during that time. Impacted employees do not have bumping rights and are not represented by a union, she added.

The vast majority of the laid-off employees, 68, are customer service delivery drivers. Other positions include marshallers, dispatchers, coordinators and a transportation manager.

The company declined to comment further.

Founded in 1939 and headquartered in Matthews, North Carolina, Harris Teeter employs 36,000 people across more than 250 stores and 85 fuel centers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, Florida and Washington, D.C. In 2013, the chain was acquired by The Kroger Co.

In June, during an call, Kroger announced plans to shutter approximately 60 underperforming stores over the next 18 months. Numerous media outlets reported that same month that Harris Teeter was closing four locations in the D.C. area, including two in and one in , as part of this larger national effort.

“We’re simplifying our business and reviewing areas that will not be meaningful to our future growth,” Kroger Chairman and interim CEO Ronald Sargent said during the earnings call. “Unfortunately, today, not all of our stores are delivering the sustainable results we need.”

California business acquires Falls Church wealth management firm

A California-based investment advisory firm has acquired , a firm that also has an office in Chicago.

A spokesperson for declined to provide the financial terms of the deal.

With the of Hemington, which had $1.2 billion in , Beacon Pointe Advisors’ assets under advisement grows to $55 billion. Hemington will adopt the Beacon Pointe name, according to the Beacon Pointe spokesperson.

This is Beacon Pointe’s 12th transaction of the year and its fifth acquisition of a female-led firm.

Eileen O’Connor and Jen Dawson have run Hemington Wealth Management as co-founder and CEO, and owner and managing director, respectively.

“Our collaboration with Hemington celebrates the continued rise of women shaping the future of wealth management,” Matt Cooper, president of Beacon Pointe Advisors, said in a news release. “Eileen, Jen and their team embody our vision of client care and thoughtful guidance, and together, we’re expanding opportunities for women to lead, inspire and make a lasting impact in our industry.”

Hemington has served high net-worth individuals and families, with a specialty in supporting women through significant life transitions.

In 2011, O’Connor completed a study in connection with the Family Wealth Advisor Council, a network of independent, fee-only wealth management firms, titled “Women of Wealth: Why Does the Financial Services Industry Still Not Hear Them?”

The specialization made the firm a good fit for Beacon Pointe, which launched a Women’s Advisory Institute in 2011, a program which focuses on investment planning for women.

“From our earliest conversations, it was clear that Beacon Pointe shares our passion for empowering women and delivering thoughtful, values-driven advice,” Dawson said in the release.

O’Connor and Dawson are now partners and managing directors at Beacon Pointe. Ten professionals from Hemington Wealth Management will work in Falls Church, and another half-dozen will work in Chicago, according to the Beacon Pointe spokesperson.

O’Connor co-founded Hemington in 2013 with Ryon Beyer, who now works at Generational Private Wealth in Puerto Rico.

The firm was named in honor of O’Connor’s father, who dreamed of having a beach home. When that dream came to fruition, he named the home The Hemington.

Beacon Pointe’s acquisition of Hemington Wealth Management closed Nov. 15. Beacon Pointe Advisors has more than 650 team members across more than 80 offices.

Reston fintech startup closes $400M financing round

Quantum Lending Solutions has closed a $400 million financing round, the -based financial tech announced Tuesday.

The transaction included a warehouse line with an initial $250 million commitment, corporate debt and equity, according to a news release. A “global asset-based private credit firm” led the round, with debt participation from New York-based investment firm Atlas SP Partners and equity participation from Pennsylvania-based investment adviser LL Funds.

Quantum’s artificial intelligence-based platform helps banks, marketplaces and tech platforms improve credit decisions and provide long-term credit to small and medium-sized businesses. The company will use the financing secured in the recent round to continue scaling the lending infrastructure platform.

“Quantum has grown significantly in recent years as we expand to meet the demand of banks and technology platforms looking to extend responsible long-term credit to their customers,” Quantum CEO Mickey Konson said in a statement. “We see this trend accelerating as we launch our recently rebuilt AI-based platform into the market.”

A merger of financial tech companies Fundation, Camino Financial and the small and medium-sized business operations team from Amount created Quantum two years ago. The company has since raised more than $50 million of equity capital, doubled its originations and decreased losses by more than 50%, and tripled its lending capacity.

Raj Mundy, LL Funds partner and Quantum’s board chairman, said in a statement: “As both an equity investor and as chairman of the board, I’ve seen firsthand how the team has rebuilt the company for the AI era while delivering consistent growth. We’re excited to continue supporting their mission to provide banks and platforms with the infrastructure they need to serve their business customers responsibly and at scale.”

Macquarie Capital advised Quantum in the financing.

Stocks sway as Nvidia earnings, jobs report test markets

Summary

  • swings as markets await ‘s and Thursday’s .
  • jumps after $1B DOE loan for Three Mile Island restart.
  • Target drops 3.3% on weaker quarterly revenue outlook.
  • Fed uncertainty grows as officials hint at pause on rate cuts amid inflation.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. is swinging through another unsettled day of trading on Wednesday, ahead of a huge couple of tests for Wall Street.

The S&P 500 added 0.2% after veering between a small loss and a leap of 1.1% earlier in the day. The index is coming off a four-day losing streak, its longest in nearly three months, and has been shaky because of worries that stock prices have shot too high and that the  may not deliver as many energizing cuts to as earlier expected.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 57 points, or 0.1%, with an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Constellation Energy helped lead the market and rallied 5% after the U.S. Department of Energy said it’s lending $1 billion to help restart Constellation’s nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island. Lowe’s rose 4.5% after the home-improvement retailer reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.

They worked against a 3.3% drop for Target, which reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer also hinted that challenges may continue through the critical season.

The market’s focus, though, remained on Nvidia. Wall Street’s most influential stock climbed 2.4% as traders made their final moves ahead of the chip company’s profit report, scheduled to arrive shortly after trading finishes for the day.

So much is riding on it.

Nvidia has grown to become the largest stock on Wall Street and briefly topped $5 trillion in value. That means its movements have more of an effect on the S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index’s direction some days.

One way Nvidia can quiet criticism that it shot too high, which has dragged its stock down more than 10% from late last month, is to keep delivering bigger profits because stock prices tend to track profits over the long term.

Nvidia has also become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips to ramp up their AI efforts. Palantir Technologies, Alphabet and other AI-linked stocks have been a major reason the U.S. stock market has been setting records, with the latest for the S&P 500 coming late last month.

Worries have been rising, though, that all the investment may not produce as much profit and productivity for the economy as earlier hoped. Critics have been suggesting AI’s surge is similar to the bubble that enveloped dot-com stocks, which ultimately imploded in 2000 and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half.

Traders are also making their final moves ahead of a jobs report coming from the U.S. government on Thursday.

It will show how many jobs employers created and destroyed in September, which earlier got delayed because of the federal government’s shutdown. Even though the data may be stale, it could sway Wall Street because of how closely traders are paying attention to the job market’s strength.

The job market has been slowing enough this year that the Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice. Lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, and the expectation on Wall Street had been for more cuts, including at the Fed’s next meeting in December.

But some Fed officials are hinting that they should take a pause next month, in part because inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target. Lower interest rates can worsen inflation.

What the Fed does is critical for the stock market because prices ran to records in part because of expectations for continued cuts to rates.

Treasury yields have been swinging in the bond market as traders rejigger their forecasts for the Fed’s overnight interest rate. The yield on the 10-year Treasury erased an earlier dip and edged up to 4.13% from 4.12% late Tuesday. That move came after the release of minutes from the Fed’s last meeting, which showed many officials said it may be appropriate to keep rates steady through 2025.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements across Europe and Asia.

Fed minutes: Most officials supported more rate cuts but not necessarily in December

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of policymakers expressed support in late October for further interest rate cuts, though not all committed to making the reduction at their next meeting in December, according to minutes released Wednesday.

At the same time, many officials said “it would likely be appropriate” to keep rates “unchanged for the rest of the year,” a sign of strong divisions among policymakers about the central bank’s next steps.

Rate cuts by the Fed, over time, typically lower borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans, and credit cards.

Fed officials are deeply split over the biggest threat to the economy: weak hiring or stubbornly-elevated inflation. If a sluggish job market is the biggest threat, then the Fed would typically cut rates more. But it combats inflation by keeping rates elevated, or even raising them.

Chair Jerome Powell had telegraphed the deep divisions among the Fed’s 19-member interest-rate setting committee at a news conference following the Oct. 28-29 meeting. The minutes were released after the customary three-week delay.

“Participants expressed strongly differing views” about whether the Fed should cut at its December 9-10 meeting, the minutes said.

The central bank decided to cut its key rate to about 3.9% at the late October meeting, down from 4.1% and the second cut this year. In September, the Fed projected it would reduce rates three times this year, in September, October, and December.

Yet in the past two weeks numerous Fed speakers have raised concerns about inflation, which came in at 3% in September and has been above the Fed’s 2% target for nearly five years. That has led Wall Street investors to mark down their expectations of another reduction next month. The odds of a cut have fallen from nearly 95% a month ago to 50-50 on Wednesday, based on futures pricing, according to CME Fedwatch.

Another wrinkle for the Fed is that jobs data for October and November won’t be released until Dec. 16, a week after the next meeting, the ‘s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday. Fed officials will see the for September, which will be published Thursday.

Michael Gapen, an economist at Morgan Stanley, said the lack of fresh jobs data reduces the chances of a rate cut in December. Weak hiring data would likely encourage more Fed policymakers to support a rate cut, while the absence of data could embolden those officials who support standing pat.