A GLOBAL stock index was little changed yesterday, with doubts churning over the US-Iran interim deal to end the Middle East war, while the dollar held firm against the yen after the Bank of Japan raised rates to a 31-year high.
Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rose more than 14 per cent, lifting its valuation past Amazon.com and briefly above Microsoft to rank it among the five most valuable companies within days of a blockbuster debut.
“It’s still really all about the exuberance of SpaceX and what SpaceX can pull along with it as far as the Nasdaq. That’s really where all of the action has been, and specifically technology,” said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “It’s going to be a stretch to see this strength continue between now and the third week in July,” when second-quarter earnings begin, he said.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable maker of AI chips, surprised investors by tapping the bond markets for $25 billion. The company said the cash would be used for general corporate purposes and the debt sale was to establish a liquid benchmark for future issuance. Nvidia shares dropped 1.6pc.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were lower while the Dow was up.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 453.08 points, or 0.88pc, to 52,126.99, the S&P 500 fell 12.51 points, or 0.17pc, to 7,541.78 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 138.61 points, or 0.52pc, to 26,545.33. MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 0.02pc to 1,131.51. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.25pc.
In foreign exchange, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.15pc to 99.50, with the euro up 0.2pc at $1.1613.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar strengthened 0.04pc to 160.38. The BOJ raised interest rates to a 31-year high in a landmark step in its policy normalization, signalling readiness to tighten further as it focuses on taming price pressures from the Iran-war-induced energy shock. The Australian dollar strengthened 0.07pc versus the greenback to $0.7076 after the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates on hold as expected.
The yield on benchmark US 10-year notes fell 3.94 basis points to 4.43pc, from 4.469pc late on Monday.
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