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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Wall Street rolls higher as bitcoin bounces above $82,000

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172 days ago
20241111
FILE - A train arrives at a Wall Street subway station in New York’s Financial District on Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - A train arrives at a Wall Street subway station in New York’s Financial District on Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

U.S. stocks are ris­ing Mon­day and adding to the gains made dur­ing their best week of the year.

The S&P 500 was up 0.3% in ear­ly trad­ing, com­ing off a 4.7% spurt last week spurred by Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial vic­to­ry and a cut to in­ter­est rates by the Fed­er­al Re­serve to bol­ster the econ­o­my. The Dow Jones In­dus­tri­al Av­er­age was up 338 points, or 0.8%, as of 9:35 a.m. East­ern time, and the Nas­daq com­pos­ite was 0.3% high­er.

Tes­la was the strongest sin­gle force push­ing the S&P 500 high­er af­ter ris­ing 8.4%. Its leader, Elon Musk, has be­come a close al­ly of Trump’s, and its stock jumped near­ly 15% the day af­ter the elec­tion and has kept ris­ing.

Sev­er­al pieces of what’s known as the “Trump trade” al­so con­tin­ued to dri­ve the mar­ket, as in­vestors try to iden­ti­fy which in­dus­tries will be win­ners un­der a sec­ond Trump term. JP­Mor­gan Chase’s 1.6% rise was an­oth­er one of the largest forces push­ing the mar­ket high­er. Bank stocks broad­ly con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from ex­pec­ta­tions for stronger eco­nom­ic growth, less reg­u­la­tion from Wash­ing­ton and an in­crease in merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions.

A White House more friend­ly to big tie-ups has Wall Street spec­u­lat­ing about a merg­er be­tween in­sur­ers Cigna Group and Hu­mana, for ex­am­ple. It’s been so fever­ish that Cigna said Mon­day it isn’t pur­su­ing a deal with Hu­mana. Cigna’s stock rose 6.4%, and Hu­mana’s sank 4.2%.

Stocks of com­pa­nies more fo­cused on the U.S. econ­o­my were al­so ris­ing more than the rest of the mar­ket, in­clud­ing a 1.1% ral­ly for the small­er stocks in the Rus­sell 2000 in­dex, be­cause they’re seen as ben­e­fit­ing more from Trump’s Amer­i­ca First poli­cies than big multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. And the stock that’s most in­ter­twined with Trump’s own pop­u­lar­i­ty, Trump Me­dia & Tech­nol­o­gy Group, rose 4.1% as he starts his tran­si­tion back to the White House in earnest.

Some of the sharpest swings were in the cryp­to mar­ket, where bit­coin rose above $82,000 for the first time. Trump has em­braced cryp­tocur­ren­cies gen­er­al­ly and pledged to make his coun­try the cryp­to cap­i­tal of the world. Bit­coin hit a record of $82,493 in ear­ly trad­ing, ac­cord­ing to Coin­Desk.

An­oth­er Trump trade has been a rise in Trea­sury yields, as traders an­tic­i­pate po­ten­tial­ly high­er eco­nom­ic growth, U.S. gov­ern­ment debt and in­fla­tion be­cause of Trump’s poli­cies. But trad­ing in the bond mar­ket is closed Mon­day in ob­ser­vance of Vet­er­ans Day.

Trea­sury yields been gen­er­al­ly climb­ing since Sep­tem­ber, in large part be­cause the U.S. econ­o­my has re­mained much more re­silient than feared. The hope is that it can con­tin­ue to stay sol­id as the Fed­er­al Re­serve con­tin­ues to cut in­ter­est rates in or­der to keep the job mar­ket hum­ming, now that it’s helped get in­fla­tion near­ly down to its 2% tar­get.

But Trump’s win has scram­bled ex­pec­ta­tions for com­ing cuts to rates. Traders have al­ready be­gun par­ing fore­casts for how many cuts to rates the Fed will de­liv­er next year be­cause of that. While low­er rates can boost the econ­o­my, they can al­so give in­fla­tion more fu­el.

Stock mar­kets abroad have swung fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion amid wor­ries about in­creased tar­iffs and dis­rup­tions to glob­al trade.

In­dex­es were mixed Mon­day, with Eu­ro­pean mar­kets ris­ing while South Ko­rea’s and Hong Kong’s sank.

AP Writer Zi­mo Zhong in Hong Kong con­tributed to this re­port.

NEW YORK (AP)

by Taboola


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