US equities rose for a fourth day on Thur. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 346.87 pts or 1.12% to close at 31,384.55. The broader S&P 500 index rose 1.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.28%. The small-cap Russell 2000 gained 2.43%.
Mega cap tech stocks rose, including Apple (AAPL US, +2.4%), Microsoft (MSFT US, +0.82%), Amazon (AMZN US, +1.75%), Alphabet (GOOGL US, +3.68%), NVidia (NVDA US, +4.81%), and Meta Platforms (META US, +1.43%). Shares of Twitter (TWTR US, +1.5%) dropped about 4% after the markets closed following a report from The Washington Post that Elon Musk’s deal to buy the company is in jeopardy. The Post cites an unnamed source as saying “Musk’s team has determined it can’t verify Twitter’s spam account figures.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note notched up 6.65 basis points (bps) to 2.9945%, while the yield on the 2-year Treasuries rose 1.23 bps to 3.0141%.
US junk bonds had a bit positive move. The iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG US) rose 1.63%. The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up $3.96 at US$104.65/bbl and $4.20 at US$102.73/bbl respectively.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.03% to 107.130 on Thur. That is a fresh 20-year high.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Aug) contracts settled up $3.20, or 0.2%, at US$1,739.70/oz. September silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 2.9 cents, or 0.2%, to end at US$19.188/oz.
European equity markets finished higher on Thur. The UK FTSE gained 1.14%, France's CAC 40 rose 1.6%, while the German DAX advanced 1.97%.