Wall Street edged slightly higher on Monday, continuing its recent recovery that has seen the S&P 500 return to within a few dozen points of its all-time highs.

In late morning trading, the Dow Jones gained 0.1% to 39.564.4 points, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.3% to 16,387.2 points.

This modest advance follows three consecutive weeks of gains for the S&P 500 index, which is now some 30 points shy of its all-time high reached at the beginning of April.

However, the session remained hesitant, with many investors preferring to stay on the sidelines ahead of inflation figures, which will prove decisive for the Fed's interest rate decision.

The CBOE's VIX volatility index - considered to be Wall Street's fear gauge - has unexpectedly surged 6.6% to 13.7 after three weeks of declines.

"The fact that the VIX is rising again, and that defensive stocks are in demand, betrays a certain sense of anxiety two days ahead of the CPI, which could well surprise on the upside", points out one trader.

We need to be careful: while there is increasing talk of the threat of 'stagflation', current price levels do not at all take into account the possibility of such a scenario", he adds.

On the stock front, Apple gained 1.8% on press reports of a forthcoming agreement with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the ChatGPT conversational robot.

Conversely, Alphabet fell by 2%, as investors had previously believed that Google was in a good position to integrate Gemini, its generative AI technology, into the iPhone ecosystem.

On the bond front, U.S. Treasury yields continued to fall, to around 4.47% for the ten-year bond, pending Wednesday's U.S. inflation figures.

After last week's recovery, the oil market continued to rally, with U.S. light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) gaining 1% to exceed $79.

No indicators on the session agenda.

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