NEW YORK, RAW – US stocks have risen, with the Dow and S&P notching their fourth straight session of gains, on optimism some progress was being made toward a deal to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia pledged to cut down on military operations around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine, while Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status, the first sign of progress toward peace in weeks.
Prices on Tuesday eased for oil and other commodities, helping calm concerns about rising inflation and the path of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, which has started hiking interest rates to combat rising prices.
“If you look over the course of the month this war has been going on, the market has priced in much more bad news than good news,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York.
“It certainly shows the market has a natural coiled spring that will be a reaction function to any good news and we saw a bit of that this morning, but everything will have to be taken with a grain of salt and we will have to see things actually play out versus being actually talked about.”
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 338.3 points, or 0.97 per cent, to 35,294.19, the S&P 500 gained 56.08 points, or 1.23 per cent, to 4,631.6 and the Nasdaq Composite added 264.73 points, or 1.84 per cent, to 14,619.64.
After a dismal start to the year for stocks that saw the S&P 500 fall into a correction, the benchmark index is now down about three per cent on the year.
Still, there were signs of market nervousness that the Fed could make a policy mistake that leads to a slowdown, or possibly a recession, as the widely tracked US 2-year/10-year Treasury inverted for the first time since September 2019.
“While I think the ultimate result of an aggressive Fed tightening cycle is a recession, I do not expect it to occur quickly. Historically speaking, all recessions are preceded by 2s10s inversions, but not all inversions result in recessions,” said Ellis Phifer, managing director, fixed income research, at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.
After slumping more than two per cent on Monday, the S&P energy index was the only declining sector as crude prices fell more than one per cent.
As the conflict in Ukraine has escalated in recent weeks, already rising prices saw more upward pressure on commodities such as wheat, energy and metals.
Even with the recent surge in inflation, data on Tuesday showed US consumer confidence rebounded from a one-year low in March.
Real estate, up nearly three per cent on the session, was the best-performing sector, which indicates some investors may see inflation remaining but no recession on the horizon.
FedEx Corp gained 3.7 per cent after the global delivery conglomerate named operating chief Raj Subramaniam as its top boss.
