U.S. stocks rise within 0.5% of their record, even as oil prices keep climbing

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NEW YORK — U.S. stocks ticked higher Wednesday following strong profit reports from BlackRock and other big companies. The tentative gains came as oil prices swung to their highest levels in a month because of the war with Iran.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent after flipping between modest gains and losses through the day, and it’s back within 0.5 per cent of its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 150 points, or 0.3 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.6 per cent.

BlackRock helped lead the market with a rise of 6.6 per cent after the company behind some of the most popular investment funds reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Laurence Fink said its iShares funds topped US$6 trillion in assets under management during the quarter, roughly doubling in three years.

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Bank of New York Mellon rose 5.1 per cent after adding to the spate of strong earnings reports from many of the biggest U.S. banks a day earlier. Cintas climbed 4.4 per cent after the provider of office uniforms, restroom supplies and other products likewise delivered a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts forecast.

They helped offset a drop for Elevance Health, which fell 8.5 per cent even though it reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected.

Expectations are high for U.S. companies’ profit growth during the spring. They’ll need to beat them to justify the big moves their stock prices have made, with indexes near their records.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 28.81 points to 7,572.40 and is within 0.5 per cent of its record set early last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 150.37 to 52,658.64, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 162.22 to 26,269.23.

The broad U.S. stock market got a lift from another report showing inflation slowed last month. It said inflation at the wholesale level slowed to 5.5 per cent from 6 per cent in May, and it was much better than the acceleration that economists expected.

The day before, a separate report said inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling was also not as bad as economists expected last month.

Such numbers take pressure off the Federal Reserve, which is considering raising interest rates. Higher rates would keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments.

Following the inflation report, traders see just a 10 per cent chance that the Fed will raise its main interest rate at its next meeting in a couple weeks. That’s down from the nearly 42 per cent probability they saw on Monday, before the inflation reports, according to data from CME Group.

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Also helping to pull down expectations was a speech from John Williams, president of the New York Fed. He said that “there are encouraging reasons to expect that inflation has peaked and should edge down in coming quarters.”

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, meanwhile, gave few clues on what to expect in testimony before a Senate committee. “Any central banker would be happy to have data going in the right direction,” he said about this week’s encouraging inflation reports, but “these are all imperfect measures of the state of underlying inflation.”

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.55 per cent from 4.58 per cent late Tuesday and from 4.62 per cent the day before.

Upward pressure on inflation remains because of the war with Iran, which has seen days of back-and-forth strikes by the United States and Iran across the Middle East.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly topped US$86 in the morning before falling back to settle at US$84.95 per barrel, up 0.3 per cent from the day before.

In stock markets abroad, South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 6.2 per cent.

Seoul’s market is dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and its main index has already had drops of 8.9 per cent, 7.9 per cent and 5.3 per cent so far this month because of sharp swings for stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence boom.

In Amsterdam, ASML reported stronger revenue growth for the latest quarter than it had forecast. CEO Christophe Fouquet said continuing progress in AI has customers accelerating their expansions, and the maker of chipmaking machinery gave a forecast for upcoming revenue growth that topped analysts’ expectations.

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ASML’s stock in Amsterdam slipped 0.4 per cent, but its stock that trades in the United States rose 2.2 per cent.

Its strong forecast helped calm some of the worries that have sent AI-related stocks spinning recently. Chief among them is the possibility that their prices shot too high in the euphoria around AI.

In China, stocks rose 1.4 per cent in Hong Kong but fell 0.3 per cent in Shanghai after the government said the world’s second-largest economy expanded at a 4.3 per cent annualized pace last quarter, down from the five per cent growth rate at the start of the year.

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Stan Choe, The Associated Press

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.