US Stocks Rise as Bond Yields Ease Despite Oil Price Surge
Wall Street stocks rose on Thursday as bond yields eased further, despite oil prices continuing to climb due to the escalating US-Iran conflict. The S&P 500 index was up 0.5%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 340 points, or 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.7% as of 10:01 am Eastern time.
The gains came after a three-day slide, with Nvidia leading the charge after announcing it would buy artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $13 billion.
Oil prices moved higher as Iran fired at Kuwait in retaliation for US bombardments earlier in the week. The conflict has pushed US crude prices up 11% so far this week, with Brent crude rising 0.6% to $96.23 per barrel and benchmark US crude increasing 1.2% to $92.12 a barrel.
Despite the oil price surge, bond yields showed signs of stabilizing, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury falling to 4.75% from 4.79% late Wednesday and the yield on the 2-year Treasury slipping to 4.32% from 4.39%.
Investors are now looking ahead to the closely watched US employment report for August, due out on Friday.