Market Still Partying After Cut

Wall Street kept the party going today, as the Federal Reserve’s half-point rate cut kept pushing stocks up. Financials even shrugged off disappointing earnings from Morgan Stanley, which posted a more-than-expected 17% drop in net income for the quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Dow rose 58.04 points in early trading, with the S&P gaining 9.97 and the Nasdaq up 19.03.

When news of the cut hit yesterday, the Dow surged 2.5%, its biggest one-day increase since 2003. International markets, too, felt the love, with the Nikkei 225 up 3.7%. Meanwhile, the Fed got some justification for its cut, when the Labor Department announced a 0.1% drop in consumer prices, a sign that inflation is under control.