NEW YORK, Jul 11 (Reuters) – US stocks rose on Tuesday, aided by optimism ahead of key inflation reports and as JPMorgan and other financial stocks rose ahead of earnings later this week.
Investors are looking for further clues about whether price pressures are easing and whether the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its rate hike cycle.
US consumer price data is expected on Wednesday, while a producer price report is expected on Thursday. Several Fed officials said this week that the central bank would likely have to raise rates further to curb inflation, but that the end of the tightening cycle was approaching.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) rose 1.6% after Jefferies upgraded the stock to a “buy” ahead of the bank’s quarterly results due Friday.
Reports from JPMorgan and other major banks later this week are expected to unofficially herald the start of the Q2 reporting period. The S&P Bank Index (.SPXBK) rose 1.5%.
Energy stocks (.SPNY) also jumped along with the sharply higher oil prices.
“It’s nice to see the market getting bigger than earnings here,” said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York.
“We have a lot of data coming in here…and the Q3 outlook is also a concern in terms of any guidance companies might provide on earnings calls.”
The S&P 500 is up 15.6% for the year so far, while technology (.SPLRCT) is up 40% over that period.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 317.02 points, or 0.93%, to 34,261.42, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 29.73 points, or 0.67%, to 4,439.26 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 75.22 points, or 0.55%, to 13,760.70.
Wall Street banks are expected to report higher earnings for the second quarter as rising interest payments offset a reduction in deal closing.
Among the S&P 500’s biggest risers on the day, shares of video game maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O) rose 10% after a US judge ruled that Microsoft (MSFT.O) may proceed with its planned acquisition of the game” Call of Duty”. maker.
Shares of Salesforce (CRM.N) rose 3.9% after the cloud services company said it would raise the prices of some of its cloud and marketing tools, a first in seven years.
Shares of Amazon.com (AMZN.O) were also up 1.3% on its “Prime Day” 48-hour discount shopping event this week.
Volume on the US exchanges was 9.97 billion shares, compared to the average of 11.1 billion for the full session over the past 20 trading days.
Emerging issues outnumbered declining issues on the NYSE by a ratio of 3.65 to 1; on Nasdaq, a ratio of 1.82 to 1 was in favor of progress.
The S&P 500 recorded 51 new highs in 52 weeks and 1 new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 91 new highs and 40 new lows.
Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch in New York Additional reporting by Johann M Cherian and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Edited by Maju Samuel and Matthew Lewis
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