5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Thursday, August 1

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Stocks rallied Wednesday, with all the major indexes closing out the session higher. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite saw their best day since February. The broad market index advanced 1.58% to finish at 5,522.30, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 2.64% to close at 17,599.40. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.24% to end the session at 40,842.79. At session highs, the Dow jumped 1.1%, and the S&P and Nasdaq saw gains of 2.1% and 3.2%, respectively.  Megacap tech names made a comeback during Wednesday’s trading session, with Nvidia posting its best day since Feb. 22 after advancing 12.8%. Others, such as Apple, Meta Platforms and Amazon, were also higher. Follow live market updates.

It’s yet another meeting with no change in rates. On Wednesday, Federal Reserve officials announced they’re holding short-term interest rates steady. However, they did specify that inflation is getting closer to the central bank’s target, meaning rate cuts could be on the horizon. When speaking with reporters following the decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that a rate cut could come as early as September if inflation continues to ease. “If that test is met, a reduction in our policy rate could be on the table as soon as the next meeting in September,” Powell said.

It’s an earnings beat for Meta. After the bell Wednesday, the megacap tech name surpassed Wall Street’s expectations for the second quarter, posting earnings of $5.16 per share on revenue of $39.07 billion. That’s more than the $4.73 per share on $38.31 billion in revenue expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG. For its third-quarter outlook, Meta expects revenue of between $38.5 billion and $41 billion, with $39.75 billion in the middle of that range. Analysts were expecting $39.1 billion in revenue for that quarter. Meta also said its second-quarter expenses were $24.2 billion, which includes the $1.4 billion settlement from Meta’s recent facial recognition lawsuit with the state of Texas.

Bill Ackman has withdrawn plans for an initial public offering. On Wednesday, the billionaire hedge-fund manager reversed course on Pershing Square USA’s fund over a lack of investor demand. That said, Ackman revealed he would return with an updated plan for the fund’s offering. “We will report back once we are ready to launch a revised transaction,” Ackman wrote in a statement. The move comes just a day after Ackman said he would be seeking to raise $2 billion for the fund, which is much lower than the initial amount of $25 billion, according to previous reports.

There’s going to be a new sheriff in town over at Boeing. The airline manufacturer announced that Robert “Kelly” Ortberg – a veteran of the aerospace industry with more than three decades of experience – will replace Dave Calhoun as CEO. Ortberg is slated to start Aug. 8. “There is much work to be done, and I’m looking forward to getting started,” Ortberg said in a news release from the company. In March, Boeing said Calhoun would be stepping down by year’s end as part of a broader company shake-up, which came after a Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier in the year.

— CNBC’s Pia Singh, Alex Harring, Jeff Cox, Jesse Pound, Jonathan Vanian, Hakyung Kim and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

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