US stocks dip as rate cut fails to ignite broad enthusiasm

Walmart shares touched an intraday all-time record of $106.11 before settling lower for the close, missing its previous record closing price of $105.05 on February 13 of this year.

The rally came after Bank of America lifted its price target on Walmart to $125 from $120 and stuck with its “buy” rating. Analysts said Walmart is emerging as a leader in “agentic AI commerce,” pointing to its GenAI assistant, Sparky, which offers occasion-based recommendations and help shoppers plan, compare, and buy products.

Analysts also flagged Walmart’s sheer scale, backed by data from 180 million customers, and its fast-growing delivery business as major competitive advantages. Beyond AI, the fundamentals are catching eyes, too. Walmart’s food delivery arm is already profitable, reaching 95% of US households within three hours and a quarter of customers in under 30 minutes.

The note also highlighted Walmart’s cushion against tariffs, since two-thirds of its products are sourced domestically, and pointed to its new Synchrony Financial-backed credit card as another way to juice membership growth.

The stock is up over 16% year to date and has more than doubled since 2020.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time this year, lowering its policy rate to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%, as anticipated.

The “dot plot” from the Summary of Economic Projections shows the median Fed official thinks it will be appropriate for the policy rate to end this year at 3.625% (expected 3.875%) and 3.375% in 2026 (expected 3.375%) if the economy evolves in line with their expectations.

Stocks slid during Fed Chair Jay Powell’s press conference, where he described the reduction as a “risk-management cut,” didn’t rule out that the US economy might still warrant restrictive monetary policy, and signaled there was not wide support for a larger 50-basis point cut at this meeting.

The iShares Russell 2000 ETF, which was up nearly 2.5% at the highs, fell into negative territory before rebounding. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF traded down as much as 0.9% before paring those losses to end up right around where it was when the rate cut was announced.

The US central bank raised its forecast for how high core PCE inflation will be next year to 2.6% from 2.4% in June, which heavily implies that monetary policymakers are willing to look through the near-term inflationary impulse from tariffs and that softening job growth has assumed more prominence in their decision-making process.

There was only one dissent: newly added Fed Governor Stephen Miran, who favored a 50-basis point cut at this meeting and appears to be the outlier Fed official who thinks the policy rate should end the year at 2.875%.

For the second day in a row, Plug Power is surging on little to no news and a ton of seemingly bullish option flow.

Tuesday’s call volumes of 97,079 were over 5x the 20-day average, and the hydrogen fuel cell company has already nearly doubled that mark by 11:54 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

So far 181,671 call options have changed hands, with activity once again centered in contracts with a strike price of $2 that expire on October 17 and this Friday.

The put/call ratio is less than 0.03, which if sustained would be the lowest since May 27, 2020. The volumes appear to be a bit of a mirage when it comes to assessing just how bullish these flows are: some of this looks to be an unwind of the previous session’s trade, with the October call options being sold.