S&P 500 Defies Gravity: SPY Nears All-Time High Despite GDP Dip & Fed Pushback on July Rate Cuts

Wall Street's darling shrugs off economic headwinds as the SPY ETF dances with destiny—proving once again that markets move faster than Fed rhetoric.

GDP slowdown? Rate-cut resistance? The S&P 500 couldn't care less. Here's how the index keeps flirting with record highs while fundamentals play catch-up.

Bonus truth bomb: When the Fed whispers 'caution,' algos hear 'buy the damn dip.' Some things never change in this circus.

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The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has revised its first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimate to -0.5% from -0.2%. Much of the downside is attributed to increased imports as businesses sought to front-run the TRUMP administration’s tariffs. These imports are subtracted from the GDP calculation. At the same time, the BEA also revised consumer spending growth to 0.5% from 1.2%.

Meanwhile, the chances of a July rate cut appear to be slim. Optimism for a 25 basis points reduction grew after Fed Governors Chris Waller and Michelle Bowman voiced their support. Since then, a slew of Fed officials, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have advocated for a “wait-and-see” approach in order to combat the risk of tariff-driven inflation later on this year.

“My modal outlook has been for some time that we WOULD begin to be able to adjust the rates in the fall, and I haven’t really changed that view,” said Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President and CEO Mary Daly in an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance on Thursday.

The S&P 500 is up by 0.74% at the time of writing.

Which Stocks are Moving the S&P 500?

Let’s take a look at TipRanks’ S&P 500 Heatmap, which illustrates the stocks that have contributed to the index’s price action.

Apple (AAPL), a major constituent of the index, is having a disappointing day, although Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) are carrying the iPhone maker’s weight. In fact, Nvidia (NVDA) clinched a new intraday all-time high of $156.72 today. Semiconductor stocks have shown strength in recent weeks and appear primed to break out.

Other Magnificent 7 members, like Google (GOOG) (GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META), and Amazon (AMZN), are all well in the green. Meanwhile, Tesla (TSLA) has given back its Robotaxi debut gains while its market capitalization is close to falling below $1 trillion.

SPY Stock Moves Higher with the S&P 500

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is an exchange-traded fund designed to track the movement of the S&P 500. As a result, SPY moves in tandem with the SPX.

Wall Street expects further upside for SPY. During the past three months, analysts have issued an average SPY price target of $658.09 for the stocks within the index, implying upside of 7.65% from current prices. The 504 stocks in SPY carry 421 buy ratings, 74 hold ratings, and 9 sell ratings.