Equities: Fed Chair Powell’s pushback to rate hike expectations helped NASDAQ 100 and Rusell 2000 to be the outperformers among the US equity indices, while Dow and S&P 500 also closed higher. Tech momentum also held up ahead of Apple earnings, which reported stronger-than-expected numbers last quarter and unveiled a bumper $110B stock buyback along with an increase in dividend, despite headwinds in China. Apple stock price was up 7% in after-hours trading. The next key test for the markets comes from the NFP jobs report today, where leading indicators have been showing some signs of a slowdown but hard data has ... (full story)