TRADING DAY Making sense of the forces driving global markets By Jamie McGeever, Markets Columnist Another batch of upbeat U.S. economic data including solid retail sales boosted risk appetite on Thursday,

Markets on Wall Street quietly hovered at record levels before the bell Friday with most of the attention on the latest corporate earnings reports and dealmaking.

This past April, when President Donald Trump started flirting with the notion of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, stocks and the dollar tumbled because investors worried that even talking about such a move crossed a red line.

PepsiCo jumped 7.5% after delivering revenue and profit that topped Wall Street’s expectations. The drink and snack giant also stood by its financial forecasts given in April, which projected lower full-year profit than previous forecasts due to increased costs from tariffs and a pullback in consumer spending.

Many on Wall Street have privately worried that political pressure will undermine the Federal Reserve’s credibility.

Wall Street benchmarks closed modestly higher on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq Composite achieving its latest record finish, despite a chaotic half hour when news reports suggested U.S. President Donald Trump was set to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Asian shares are mostly higher after Wall Street rose to records following better-than-expected updates on the economy and a mixed set of profit reports from big U.S. companies