Stock market today: Wall Street up after the jump in the French market | News, Sports, Jobs

FILE – A man walking on Wall Street approaches the New York Stock Exchange, right, June 26, 2024, in New York. Stocks rose in Europe on July 1, 2024, with the benchmark index in Paris climbing 2.8% briefly after the far-right National Rally took a strong lead in the first round of legislative elections. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

(AP) — U.S. stocks rose Monday, tracking the French market as the election continued to cause fluctuations in financial markets around the world.

The S&P 500 index rose 0.2% to start a short four-day week that includes the July 4 holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 227 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:40 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.1%.

One of the most notable events of the week took place across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris jumped 2.8% before settling down 1.9%. Last week’s results suggest that a far-right political party may not win a decisive majority in the country’s legislative elections. That could mean the country could avoid one of the worst-case scenarios for financial markets, where such a victory could lead to policies that would dramatically increase French government debt and other challenges.

This year will be a major election year around the world. Voters will head to the polls in the UK this week and soon elsewhere. In the US, pollsters are gauging 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 drive the economy, rather than the other way around,” according to Nick Gentle and others in Barclays’ product management group.

U.S. Treasury yields have risen, a sign that investors are feeling less pressure to hold the safest U.S. investments. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.43% from 4.39% last Friday.

Yields have been falling since the 10-year yield topped 4.70% in late April, amid hopes that inflation will slow enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate later this year from the highest level in more than two decades. High rates slow the U.S. economy by making it more expensive to borrow for a home, car or other asset.

On Wall Street, Chewy rose 5.7% after a widely followed trader, Keith Gill, revealed 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 rose to fame during the 2020 stock meme craze, which saw GameStop soar to new heights in the market. Throughout it all, Gill became the face of the fans who pushed GameStop higher. Gill has recently started talking about GameStop again, which has helped its stock rally. But it fell 6.4% on Monday after his Chewy revelation.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Spirit AeroSystems rose 4.4% after Boeing said it would buy the maker of fuselages and other aircraft parts for $4.7 billion in stock and assume about $3.6 billion of its debt.

Boeing, which rose 3.3%, faces increased scrutiny from the government and airlines that buy its planes over concerns about safety and quality. Boeing previously owned Spirit, and the acquisition reverses a long-standing strategy of outsourcing key tasks on its jetliners.

Meta Platforms fell 0.3% after European Union regulators accused it of breaking the bloc's new digital competition rules by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.

In overseas stock markets, Japan's Nikkei 225 index gained 0.1 percent after a quarterly survey by the Bank of Japan, called “tankan,” showed a modest improvement in confidence among the country's biggest manufacturers in April-June.

However, the government revised down its growth estimates for the first quarter of the year to an annual rate of minus 2.9%, from a previous figure of minus 1.8%.

Shanghai stocks rose 0.9% after mixed data from the world's second-largest economy. A survey of factory purchasing managers released over the weekend showed the situation remained in contraction for a second straight month.

But a similar private sector survey of manufacturing activity, released Monday, showed improving business conditions.