Wall Street drifts, yields jump and Paris stocks soar as election sends markets spinning WFTV

NEW YORK — (AP) U.S. stocks ended the session mixed Monday, and bond yields jumped, Elections continue to cause fluctuations in financial markets around the world.

The S&P 500 index rose 0.3% to start a shortened four-day week that includes the July 4 holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 50 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.8%.

Some of the world's strongest action took place across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris jumped 2.8% before settling for a gain of 1.1%. The results from France suggested a Far-right political party may fail to secure decisive majority in the country's legislative elections. This has reinforced hopes of a possible paralysis of the French government, which would prevent the worst-case scenario where a far-right with a clear majority could put pressure policies that would significantly increase the French government's debt.

It's a big year for elections around the world, with voters heading to the polls. UK polls later this week and soon elsewhere. In the United States, pollsters are measuring the fallout from last week's debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. All of this underscores “political polarization and how elections determine the economy, rather than the other way around,” according to Nick Gentle and others in Barclays’ product management group.

Trump Media & Technology Group, whose stock has been up and down as Donald Trump's chances of winning the White House have ebbed and flowed, rose 1 percent to $33.08. Shares of the company behind Trump's Truth Social platform, however, are still well below the roughly $70 level it reached earlier this year.

The bond market saw some of the strongest action in the U.S. market. Treasury yields jumped again, as they did Friday immediately after the Biden-Trump debate. The increased prospects of a Republican victory in November sent traders back to the moves of 2016, according to Morgan Stanley strategists. In addition to pushing rates higher, traders also invested in stocks of oil and gas and financial companies.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.46% from 4.39% late Friday and 4.29% late Thursday. That's a reversal of the broad trend since the spring, when the 10-year Treasury yield topped 4.70% in late April.

Yields have fallen sharply on hopes that inflation will slow enough to convince the Federal Reserve to reduce its main interest rate later this year, down from the highest level in more than two decades. High rates have been The American economy is collapsing by making it more expensive borrow money for a housecar or something else.

Hopes for a rate cut were maintained after a report on Monday showed that the U.S. manufacturing industry weakened Last month, price increases outpaced economists’ forecasts. Perhaps more important for Wall Street, the Institute for Supply Management’s report also indicated that price increases are slowing. Taken together, these data could provide more evidence that the Federal Reserve wants to see inflation pressure ease before cutting rates.

The highlight of the economic week will likely be Friday, when the U.S. government releases the number of workers employers hired in June. Economists forecast that overall hiring slowed to 190,000, down from 272,000 in May. That would put the figure closer to what Bank of America calls the Goldilocks figure of about 150,000, give or take 25,000.

At this level, the U.S. economy could continue to grow and avoid a recession without being strong enough to put upward pressure on inflation.

On Wall Street, Chewy swung from a big initial gain to a 6.6% loss after a a well-followed trader named Keith Gill He disclosed that he owns just over 9 million shares of the pet supply company. That represents about 6.6% of the entire company, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gill became famous during the The Original Stock Market Meme Craze of 2021 which saw GameStop rally heights that bend the market. Gill, who goes by “Roaring Kitty” and other nicknames, became the face of the fans who pushed GameStop up. Gill had returned to talking about GameStop recently, which helped its share price rally. But it fell 5.5% on Monday after Gill's revelation about Chewy.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Spirit AeroSystems rose 3.3% after Boeing announced it would buy the fuselage maker and other aircraft parts worth $4.7 billion in inventory.

Boeing, which rose 2.6%, faced difficulties government control and customers are concerned about safety and qualityBoeing previously owned Spirit AeroSystems, and the purchase reverses the company's long-standing strategy of outsourcing key work on its jetliners.

Meta platforms gained 0.1% after European Union regulators accused It is about violating the news digital competition rules by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.

Overall, the S&P 500 rose 14.61 points to 5,475.09, although three out of four stocks in the index fell. Gains in Meta and other big-name players, such as Nvidia's 0.6% gain, overshadowed those losses.

The Dow Jones gained 50.66 points to 39,169.52 and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 146.70 points to 17,879.30.

On foreign stock markets, Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.1% after a quarterly survey The Bank of Japan's survey, dubbed “tankan,” showed a modest improvement in confidence among the country's top manufacturers. Shanghai stocks rose 0.9 percent after mixed economic data.

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AP reporters Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed to this report.

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