NEW YORK • Wall Street ticked higher Thursday to trim its sharp loss for September after pressure squeezing it from the oil and bond markets relaxed a bit.

A drop in oil prices took some heat off the stock market, a day after crude reached its highest price of the year. Treasury yields also relaxed to give the stock market more of a breather, particularly Big Tech companies.

A 2.1% climb for Meta Platforms and 1.5% gain for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.

Stocks, though, are still on track for their worst month of the year as Wall Street grapples with a new normal where interest rates may stay high for a while. The Federal Reserve has pulled its main interest rate to the highest level since 2001 in hopes of extinguishing high inflation, and it indicated last week it may cut rates by less next year than earlier expected.

It’s a sharp departure from prior years for investors, who counted on the Fed to cut rates quickly and sharply whenever things looked dicey.