The US stockmarket motored to more records on Thursday as profits keep piling up for big businesses. The gains came after the latest whipsaw moves for oil prices, which surged toward their highest levels since the war with Iran began only to quickly regress.
The S&P 500 rallied 1% and topped its prior all-time high to close out its best month in more than five years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average leapt 790 points, or 1.6%, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.9% to its own record.
Alphabet led the way and rallied 10% after the owner of Google and YouTube reported profit for the latest quarter that almost doubled analysts' expectations.
It's the latest company to deliver fatter profits for the start of 2026 than analysts expected, even with very high oil prices and uncertainty about the economy.
Oil prices swing wildly
Wall Street's strength followed major swings in the oil market, where prices surged overnight on worries that the Iran war will affect the flow of crude for a long time. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, keeping them pent up in the Persian Gulf and away from customers worldwide, while a US Navy blockade is preventing Iran from selling its own oil.
Traders are buying and selling contracts for different kinds of oil, going out for many months. In the most actively traded part of the market for Brent crude, for delivery in July, the price got as high as $US114.70 per barrel overnight. It then fell back toward $US107 before settling at $US110.40, nearly unchanged from the day before.
So far during the war, the peak price for the most actively traded Brent contract is $US119.50, which was set last month.
In a less actively traded corner of the Brent market, the price for a barrel to be delivered in June briefly went above $US126 overnight before pulling back toward $US114.
Brent's price is still much more expensive than its roughly $US70 level from before the war. But the morning's easing in prices and the continuing flood of better-than-expected profit reports from US companies helped keep Wall Street at its records.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 73.06 points to 7,209.01. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 790.33 to 49,652.14, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 219.07 to 24,892.31.
Bond yields pull back as US shows signs of growth
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after oil prices gave up their big overnight gains. Reports also suggested the US economy's growth accelerated by less in the first three months of the year than economists expected, while a measure of inflation worsened in March by about as much as expected.
A separate report said that fewer US workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in an indication of fewer layoffs even though companies are announcing large cuts to workforces.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.38% from 4.42% late on Wednesday.
Around the world, indexes rose in Europe following a weaker finish in Asia. London's FTSE 100 jumped 1.6% after the Bank of England kept its main interest rate on hold. That followed similar decisions by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday and the Bank of Japan on Tuesday to keep their rates unchanged. Germany's DAX returned 1.4%, and France's CAC 40 rose 0.5% after the European Central Bank also held its own interest rates steady. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3%, while stocks added 0.1% in Shanghai after a report said China's factory activity slowed slightly in April but remained in expansion territory for the second month.
The Associated Press
