Stock Market Today: Wall Street Approaches Record Highs…

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks held near record highs Tuesday after an eight-day streak of gains.

The S&P 500 was little changed in early trading. It is hovering within 1% of its all-time high after falling nearly 10% below that level earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 82 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. ET, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.1%.

Palo Alto Networks helped lead the market, rising 6.6%. The cybersecurity company became the latest major business to report stronger profit and revenue in the latest quarter than analysts expected. S&P 500 companies are on track to post their best earnings-per-share growth since the end of 2021, according to FactSet.

Lowe’s also topped analysts’ earnings forecasts in the spring, but its shares were more reserved. The home improvement retailer said it faces a challenging economic environment, “particularly for homeowners,” and lowered its revenue and profit forecasts for the fiscal year. Its shares fell 1.1%.

High interest rates are weighing on the economy after the Federal Reserve raised them sharply to rein in inflation. Treasury yields fell Tuesday ahead of a speech Friday by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that is likely to be the most important event of the week for financial markets.

The Jackson Hole Economic Symposium in Wyoming, where Powell will speak, has been a place of big policy announcements in the past. Expectations are not as high this time, with almost everyone expecting the Fed to start cutting interest rates next month.

The biggest question is whether the economy needs the Fed just to take the brakes off, or if it needs additional stimulus that requires deeper and faster cuts. A surprisingly weak jobs report from U.S. employers last month raised concerns that the Fed had already been keeping interest rates too high for too long, but later reports on everything from inflation to U.S. retail sales helped bolster optimism.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.84% from 3.87% on Monday evening.

On Wall Street, the company behind Hawaiian Airlines rose 11.4% after it said its proposed merger with the company behind Alaska Airlines had cleared a major regulatory hurdle. The period for U.S. antitrust regulators to review the deal has passed.

Alaska Air Group shares fell 0.2%.

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Contributed by AP Business Writer Matt Ott.