By Liz Moyer
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks were rising as investors awaited Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's Congressional testimony this week.
At 10:08 ET (15:08 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 129 points or 0.4%, while the S&P 500 was up 0.5% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 0.6%.
Powell is set to make his semiannual trek to Capitol Hill and is expected to make the central bank's case that there is still work to be done to tame inflation.
Many believe the Fed will raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point when it meets later this month, and a growing number of traders see the chance it will raise by a half a percentage point. There is also agreement that the Fed will likely raise rates again in May by a quarter of a percentage point.
The testimony is scheduled for tomorrow and Wednesday. Recent hotter-than-expected economic data is fueling the case that rates need to stay higher for longer in order to nudge inflation lower toward the Fed's 2% target.
Later this week, a crucial piece of data that the Fed will take into account comes out: the jobs report for February. Analysts expect the economy added 200,000 last month after a blistering hot earlier report said it added 517,000 jobs in January.
Futures traders see the benchmark rate rising to near 5.4% later this summer. It’s at around 4.7% now.
Goldman Sachs initiated Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) as a buy, sending the iPhone maker’s shares up 2.2%. Shares of crypto bank Silvergate Capital Corp. (NYSE:SI) were down 4.7% after it ended its Silvergate Exchange Network.
Oil fell. Crude Oil WTI Futures was down 0.8% to $79.06 a barrel, while Brent Oil Futures crude fell 0.9% to $85.08 a barrel. Gold Futures was flat at $1855.