Walmart joins X boycotters

Walmart Inc. has stopped advertising on the social media platform X, the latest major company to do so.

“We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,” a Walmart spokeswoman told Bloomberg News. She declined to say when the change takes effect or what motivated it.

The exit of Walmart, the largest retailer in the U.S., adds to the growing number of companies that are abandoning the social platform previously known as Twitter after owner Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post.

Musk said the post was “worst and dumbest I’ve ever done” earlier this week at the New York Times DealBook conference.

Fed’s Powell cools rate debate

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pushed back against Wall Street’s growing expectations of interest-rate cuts in the first half of 2024, saying the committee will move cautiously with borrowing costs at a 22-year high but retain the option to hike further.

“It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease,” Powell said Friday in Atlanta.

“We are prepared to tighten policy further if it becomes appropriate to do so.”

Powell signaled that Fed officials expect to leave interest rates steady when they meet Dec. 12-13, giving themselves more time to evaluate the economy after raising rates aggressively from near zero in March 2022 to above 5% in July.

A slowing U.S. economy and fall in the inflation rate have raised expectations among investors that the central bank could begin to cut rates as soon as March.

“Having come so far so quickly, the FOMC is moving forward carefully, as the risks of under- and over-tightening are becoming more balanced,” Powell said at Spelman College, a historically Black school in Atlanta.

Markets took Powell’s brush-off in stride, boosting odds of a quarter-point cut by the Federal Open Market Committee’s March meeting well above 50%, and fully pricing in a cut in May.

Traders see more than a full point of cuts by December 2024.

From wire reports