WALL Street stocks resumed their upward climb on Wednesday (Feb 14), shaking off worries about inflation that had punished the market the prior session.

New data released on Tuesday showed January inflation at a higher rate than expected, leading analysts to push out their expectations for central bank interest rate cuts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.4 per cent at 38,424.27.

The broad-based S&P 500 gained 1.0 per cent to 5,000.62, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 1.3 per cent to 15,859.15.

“I think investors really took a second look, and concluded that the economy’s doing pretty well,” said Jack Ablin of Cresset Capital.

Among individual companies, Lyft vaulted nearly 35 per cent higher after it projected a 2024 profit margin expansion of around 50 basis points.

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Lyft’s earnings release late Tuesday had incorrectly stated the increase at 500 basis points, sending shares up as much as 60 per cent in after-hours trading before the company corrected the error.

Rival rideshare business Uber surged nearly 15 per cent after announcing the authorisation of the repurchase of up to US$7 billion in company stock, the company’s first buyback.

Kraft Heinz fell 5.5 per cent after reporting a 0.6 per cent drop in revenues, blaming the decline on “ongoing consumer pressure” amid higher prices.

Airbnb dipped 1.7 per cent as it reported a quarterly loss despite a 17 per cent increase in revenues to US$2.2 billion.

Briefing.com attributed Airbnb’s fall to an “overextended” stock price and “investors pricing in a year of normalised growth after a long-lasting post-pandemic tailwind”. AFP