01:59 PM EDT, 08/23/2024 (MT Newswires) -- US benchmark equity indexes were higher intraday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the "time has come" for monetary policy easing.

The Nasdaq Composite was up 1% at 17,796.4 after midday Friday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 rose 0.7% each to 41,008 and 5,611.2, respectively. Real estate and energy led the gainers among sectors, while consumer staples was the lone decliner.

"The time has come for policy to adjust," Powell said at the Kansas City Fed-sponsored economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, adding that upside risks to inflation have "diminished."

"The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks," Powell said.

The central bank's Federal Open Market Committee increased interest rates by 525 basis points from March 2022 through July 2023 to tame inflation, but has since held monetary policy steady, with its latest pause coming late last month.

"While Chair Powell didn't give much in terms of the expected pace of cuts, it didn't seem like an oversized 50-basis-point cut is warranted at this time," TD said in a Friday note to clients.

The US two-year yield fell 8.2 basis points to 3.93% intraday, while the 10-year rate decreased 4.2 basis points to 3.82%.

In company news, Workday (WDAY) shares were up nearly 12%, the top gainer on the Nasdaq. Late Thursday, the maker of cloud applications for finance and human resources reported fiscal second-quarter results above market estimates and reiterated its full-year subscription revenue outlook.

Warner Bros. Discovery ( WBD ) has started working on expanding original programming for TNT, but the content will not be as expensive as TNT's previous offerings, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. The company's shares rose 6%, the second-best performer on the Nasdaq and among the best on the S&P 500.

Intuit (INTU) saw the steepest decline on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, about 7.5%. Late Thursday, the financial technology platform issued a fiscal first-quarter financial outlook that fell short of Wall Street's estimates at the time.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 2.7% to $74.95 a barrel intraday.

In economic news, new-home sales in the US increased by a double-digit percentage in July even as median prices at the national level increased for the second consecutive month, government data showed.

Gold was up 1.2% at $2,547.50 per troy ounce, while silver jumped 2.6% to $29.81 per ounce.