Earnings optimism helps Wall St shrug off rising yields, Dow rises 300 pts

 

Shares of megacap companies like Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Amazon, typically sensitive to bond yields, jumped more than 1% despite hawkish comments from St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President

US stocks rose on Tuesday even in the face of surging Treasury yields as a positive earnings reports helped investors shrug off potential risks from an aggressive rise in U.S. interest rates and the Ukraine war.

Johnson & Johnson rose 2.8% to a record high as the drugmaker's quarterly profit exceeded market expectations and it raised the dividend payout.

Halliburton Co gained 1.5% after the oilfield services firm posted an 85% rise in first-quarter adjusted profit, as a rally in crude prices boosted demand for its services and equipment.

Shares of megacap companies like Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Amazon.com, typically sensitive to bond yields, jumped more than 1% despite hawkish comments from St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank

President James Bullard.

The benchmark 10-year note yield rose to 2.924, while the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield hit 3% for the first time since early 2019.

Bernard Arnault overtakes Bill Gates as world’s second-richest person

This year has been particularly good to French tycoons, with Arnault, Kering SA’s Francois Pinault and cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers tacking on a combined $57 billion

Bill Gates has never ranked lower than No. 2 in the seven-year history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That run ended Tuesday when the Microsoft Corp. co-founder dropped to No. 3 behind France’s Bernard Arnault.

LVMH, Arnault’s luxury-goods maker, advanced to a record Tuesday and pushed his net worth to $107.6 billion and ahead of Gates by more than $200 million. The shares extended their gains Wednesday, rising 0.7% at 1:54 p.m. in Paris. Arnault has added about $39 billion to his fortune in 2019 alone, the biggest individual gain by far among the 500 people in Bloomberg’s ranking.

Bernard Arnault, 70, joined Gates and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, in the most exclusive wealth club last month, when his fortune surpassed $100 billion for the first time. The trio’s collective wealth exceeds the individual market values of almost every company in the S&P 500 Index, including Walmart Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Walt Disney Co. This year has been particularly good to French tycoons, with Arnault, Kering SA’s Francois Pinault and cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers tacking on a combined $57 billion.

Arnault and his family are among luxury titans who pledged more than $650 million in April for the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral after fire ravaged the landmark church. He controls about half of Paris-based LVMH through a family holding company and also owns a 97% stake in Christian Dior, the fashion house founded three years before his birth in 1949…