Stocks Rise as Wall Street Earnings Lift Market Outlook
By Chibuike Oguh
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Global stocks rose and Treasury yields dipped on Monday with major Wall Street benchmarks hitting fresh records, buoyed by a robust start to the U.S. corporate earnings season and an improving economic outlook.
A large proportion of S&P 500 companies are due to report results this week, including technology heavyweights Facebook, Apple Inc, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet, which have been the drivers of the market rally this year.
The Dow Jones Industrials and S&P 500 closed at record highs on Monday as traders looked ahead to earnings reports.
“The number one thing is that earnings are better-than-expected and what’s more interesting is that as we approach the end of the year, we’re going to see forward guidance being lifted, which would make the market multiple more reasonable,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital in New York.
The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 50 countries, rose 0.28%, while the pan-European STOXX 600 index gained 0.07%.
In choppy trading on Monday, U.S. Treasury yields were lower as uncertainty about when the Federal Reserve would raise rates to curb rising inflation weighed on market sentiment.
The benchmark U.S. 10-year yield fell to 1.6325%. Last week, the 10-year yield hit 1.705%, the highest since mid-May.
The U.S. dollar rose from a one-month low on Monday, ahead of central bank meetings and economic data coming later this week, boosted by the prospect of a tighter U.S. monetary policy. The dollar index was up 0.178% at 93.828.
On Wall Street, the group of stocks with the highest gains were consumer discretionary, industrials, communication services and technology stocks.
A string of solid quarterly earnings reports this month, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc and insurer Travelers Cos Inc, have boosted market expectations.
Tesla, which jumped 12.66% and breached $1 trillion in market capitalization, also provided the biggest boost to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.18% to 35,741.15, the S&P 500 gained 0.47% to 4,566.48 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.9, to 15,226.71.
Oil prices rose on Monday and reached multi-year highs, as tight global supply and strengthening fuel demand in the United States and beyond supported prices.
Brent crude futures gained 0.43% to $85.90 a barrel, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures pared earlier gains and traded lower at 0.06% to $83.71 a barrel in early afternoon trading.
Gold prices rose nearly 1% on Monday, as a retreat in U.S. bond yields and persistent worries about inflation lifted the safe-haven asset ahead of major central bank meetings this week.
Spot gold gained 0.85% to $1,807.7102 per ounce, while U.S. gold futures for December delivery settled up 0.6% at $1,806.80 per ounce.
(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh; editing by David Evans and Sam Holmes)
