Stock Market Live November 21: S&P 500 (VOO) Bounces Higher on Positive Fed Commentary
Quick Read
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New York Federal Reserve President John Williams gave a speech in Santiago, Chile, seeming to predict a Fed interest rate cut in December.
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Trading website stock Webull is up on an earnings beat last night.
Live Updates
Amazon is Go for Launch
With a handful of satellites now in orbit, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) has renamed its new “Project Kuiper” satellite communications constellation “Amazon Leo” instead — LEO referring to the satellites’ location in “Low Earth Orbit.”
Amazon just announced it will launch its next batch of satellites December 15, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, and still aims to have “more than 3,000 spacecraft” in orbit eventually, competing with SpaceX Starlink. A successful launch will bring Leo’s status to 180 satellites in orbit. The company expects it will need to launch a total of at least 80 times to complete the constellation.
Amazon stock is up a modest 0.2% today, but the Voo is now gaining strength again, and up 0.5%.
Gap Up
One more earnings report from last night deserves mention:
Clothing store chain The Gap (NYSE: GAP) beat Q3 earnings by four cents, reporting $0.62 per share in profit on sales of $3.94 billion — about $40 million more than expected. Gap management also raised the floor on its forecast for fiscal 2025 sales growth, which should now grow between 1.7% and 2%, and raised its guidance for profit margin as well.
Gap stock is currently up 4.5%. The Voo, however, has once again reversed and is now down 0.2%.
BJ's Beats
In other earnings news this morning, BJ’s Wholesale Club (NYSE: BJ) just reported six cents better earnings than expected for its fiscal Q3 2026. Earnings per share were $1.16, while revenue for the quarter nailed the analyst forecast of $5.35 billion.
BJ’s then proceeded to give strong guidance for the rest of fiscal 2026, saying earnings will range from $4.30 to $4.40. Taken at the midpoint, that’s two cents better than analysts had expected. Still, the beat appears to have been not quite big enough to please investors, and BJ’s stock is down about 2% this morning.
The Voo, however, is still up 0.4%.
This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.
December’s right around the corner, and with it, the next chance that the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates, giving the stock market one final boost as it wraps up its year. Yesterday, a stronger-than-expected September jobs report, plus an earnings beat from Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA), had investors convinced that no interest rate cut is in the cards.
Today, however, is different.
Thanks to comments from New York Federal Reserve President John Williams at a speech in Santiago, Chile (of all places), last night, market pundits have raised the chance of one final quarter-point rate cut in 2025 to 70%. And on this hope, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) is up 0.4% premarket.
Williams told the crowd in Chile that, in his personal opinion, there’s still “room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral, thereby maintaining the balance between the achievement of our two goals.”
It’s a bit verbose, but investors are interpreting the statement to mean: “Yep, I bet we’ll cut the interest rate in December.”
Earnings
In earnings news, stock trading website Webull (Nasdaq: BULL) is responding not just to the positive interest rate news, but to news of its own earnings beat in Q3. Last night Webull reported $0.07 per share in quarterly earnings, four cents better than expected, and revenue of $156.9 million — nearly $20 million more than expected.
Webull stock is up 2% premarket.
S&P 500 component company Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) did even better, beating by 25 cents as it reported a $3.34 quarterly profit on sales of $3.9 billion — also ahead of estimates.
Intuit guided investors to about the same revenue Wall Street expects for fiscal 2026, $21.15 billion, but earnings a little lower than forecast — $22.98 to $23.18 per share. The stock is up 5% premarket.
Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
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