NEW YORK—Wall Street rose Thursday with hopes that the Federal Reserve may soon take it easier on its hikes to interest rates.
The S&P 500 rallied 1 percent after a suite of reports painted a picture of a split U.S. economy. The job market remains solid, but manufacturing is weakening and retailers are seeing shoppers under pressure. Altogether, investors saw the data pushing the Fed toward not hiking rates at its meeting in two weeks, which would be the first time that’s happened in more than a year.
The Nasdaq composite led the market with a 1.3 percent jump. It’s full of technology companies and other high-growth stocks that tend to benefit most from lower rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 153 points, or 0.5 percent….