1. The S&P 500 closed up 2.02%, the Nasdaq Composite closed up 2.74%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.23%. 2. The dollar fell 0.6% against the yen to 142.52. The euro rose 0.7%. 3. Gold closed up 1.85%. 4. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell 7.6 basis points to 4.311%. 5. Brent crude oil fell 0.4% to $66.38 a barrel. 6. The pan-European Stoxx 600 rose 0.36%, and the pan-European STOXX 300 rose 0.40%. 7. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks excluding Japan closed down 0.33%, and the Nikkei rose 0.49%.
Stocks rise for third straight day as earnings optimism trumps tariff concerns
While Thursday marked the third straight day of gains for Wall Street, it’s too early to declare “confidence is back” given three weeks of tariff news and a sharp sell-off four trading days ago!
The S&P 500 is up more than 6% since Tuesday, but is still down about 10% from its all-time close on Feb. 19 and more than 3% since U.S. President Donald Trump’s unpopular “Liberation Day” tariff press conference on April 2.
But some decent earnings reports have stabilized investor sentiment, even though companies haven’t felt the full brunt of the current tariff regime.
ServiceNow rose 14.8% after better-than-expected profits on strong demand for its artificial intelligence software. Alphabet will report earnings after the close, which may provide more information on the return on its AI investments.
Beijing said the U.S. should remove all “unilateral tariff measures” against China if it is serious about resolving trade issues. Beijing also said there had been no trade talks between the two countries, but Trump refuted that. So the chaos continues.
The White House on Wednesday expressed its willingness to reduce across-the-board tariffs on China to 50% to 60% from the 145% Trump had initially announced. This comes after Trump initially announced the removal of large-scale tariffs on most other trading partners.
About 73.9% of the 157 S&P 500 companies that have reported first-quarter results so far have beaten analysts’ expectations even amid tariff uncertainty, according to London Stock Exchange Group data. Even so, companies across multiple industries said they are raising prices and are uncertain about the outlook because of Trump’s trade policies.
The dollar retreated after trade optimism on Wednesday, but did not fall to the lows seen when U.S. assets were hit the hardest.
U.S. Treasury prices firmed on hopes that the tariff war would not be as bad as thought, so yields fell but remained in the range established during the bond and dollar plunge.
Market concerns about a sharp pullback by foreign buyers were eased somewhat this week as U.S. Treasury auction allocation data released Wednesday showed strong foreign demand for 10-year Treasury auctions earlier this month amid a bond market sell-off caused by tariff-induced volatility.
