US equities advanced on Wed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 305.28 pts, or 0.86%, higher to close at 35,768.06. The S&P 500 index rose 1.45%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.08%. The small cap Russell 2000 gained 1.86%.
Shares of Facebook-parent Meta Platforms (FB US, +5.37%) rose after a fourday slide wiped about a third off its market value. Walt Disney (DIS US, +3.33%) gained 6.8% in after-hours trade on Wed. The “House of Mouse” is firing on all cylinders. People returning to its theme parks. Viewers of the flagship streaming service Disney+ jumped 11.8m to 129.8m. It was not expected to reach that size until the end of this quarter.
The cloud has been good for companies this reporting season. Amazon (AMZN US, -0.1%) and Microsoft (MSFT US, +2.2%), both benefitted from growth in their cloud services divisions. What happens when a pure cloud software company reports? They knock it out of the park! Twilio (TWLO US, +1.8%) shares are up 29% in extended-hours trade after reporting strong earnings.
Solar stocks were at their highest in nearly three weeks on Wed after Enphase Energy’s (ENPH US, +12.03%) blockbuster results and strong forecast suggested a deft navigation of the supply-chain crisis.
The 10-year Treasury note yield slipped 2.17 basis points (bps) to 1.9415%. The most actively traded US gold futures (Apr) contracts settled up $8.70, or 0.5%, at US$1,836.60/oz. March silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose 14.1 cents, or 0.6%, to end at US$23.341/oz.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.16% to 95.494.
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed up 77 cents at US$91.55/bbl and 30 cents at US$89.66/bbl respectively.
European equity markets finished higher on Wed. The UK FTSE gained 1.01%, France's CAC 40 rose 1.46%, while the German DAX advanced 1.57%.