Stock market news live: Stocks come down from record highs, close little changed

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U.S. stocks were higher Tuesday, pointing to a second straight day of gains after a first day of congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

4:13 p.m. ET: Stocks come down from record highs, close little changed

Here’s where the major indices had settled as of 4:13 p.m. ET:

  • S&P 500 (^GSPC): +0.17% or +5.66 points to 3,357.75

  • Dow (^DJI): -0.00% or -0.48 points to 29,276.34

  • Nasdaq (^IXIC): +0.11% or +10.55 points to 9,638.94

  • Crude oil (CL=F): +0.87% or +0.43 to 50.00 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F) -0.50% or -7.90 to 1,571.60 per ounce

3:01 p.m. ET: Trump ‘wants to put as much pressure on the Fed as he can’: Strategist

President Donald Trump’s persistent calls for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates are an effort to juice the economy and stock market ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, according to at least one strategist.

“I think in the President’s ideal world, he gets rates pushed down even lower, gets some good economic news towards the end of summer, because he really wants a strong economy and strong stock market – not necessarily now, he needs it in September, October as people are going to the polls,” Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities, told Yahoo Finance during The Ticker Thursday. “So he wants to put as much pressure on the Fed as he can.”

Earlier Thursday, Trump wrote in a Twitter post during Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony that the “Fed Rate is too high” and a strong dollar is “tough on exports” for U.S. companies. The current target range for benchmark interest rates is between 1.5% and 1.75%, with the Fed having brought rates down by a cumulative 75 basis points last year.

Trump is not the first president to pressure the Fed to lower rates and boost stocks by bringing down the cost of borrowing for companies. However, his frequent, public calls for lower rates and scathing remarks about the Fed chair he nominated have largely been seen as unprecedented.

1:00 p.m. ET: Coronavirus means low oil prices (for now)

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, workers inspect the pipelines and oil storage tanks of China and Russia crude oil pipeline in Mohe, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. The nearly 1, 000-kilometer (625-miles) -long China and Russia crude oil pipeline starts its full operation here Saturday and it will carry 15 million tons of crude oil annually from Russian oilfields into China in the next 20 years, according to Xinhua. The pipeline, a joint project conducted by PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, and Rosnef, Russia's largest oil company, is part of Russia's 4, 000-kilometer (2,500-mile) East Siberia to Pacific Ocean Pipeline Shipment project, Xinhua also said.  (AP Photo/Xinhua, Wang Jianwei) NO SALES
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, workers inspect the pipelines and oil storage tanks of China and Russia crude oil pipeline in Mohe, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. The nearly 1, 000-kilometer (625-miles) -long China and Russia crude oil pipeline starts its full operation here Saturday and it will carry 15 million tons of crude oil annually from Russian oilfields into China in the next 20 years, according to Xinhua. The pipeline, a joint project conducted by PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, and Rosnef, Russia's largest oil company, is part of Russia's 4, 000-kilometer (2,500-mile) East Siberia to Pacific Ocean Pipeline Shipment project, Xinhua also said. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Wang Jianwei) NO SALES

Capital Economics said in a research note that coronavirus jitters, which have weighed heavily on oil prices, will wane — but after the first quarter. For now, global oil markets will be oversupplied as China grapples with new infections and an economy that’s ground to a near-halt:

“The economic disruption caused by the coronavirus means that we now expect the oil market to be in a surplus in Q1 2020, as opposed to the deficit that we had previously envisioned. However, providing that the virus is contained, we think that demand will recover in the following quarters and, in conjunction with weak supply growth, will lead to a market deficit in the remainder of this year.”