Wall Street closes higher ahead of CPI report
STORY: U.S. stocks rallied on Monday, notching their fourth straight session of gains with all three major indexes hitting two-week highs, as investors awaited crucial inflation data due out Tuesday.
The Dow rose seven tenths of a percent. The S&P 500 gained a full percent, while the Nasdaq ended more than a percent and a quarter higher.
The Labor Department's consumer price index, expected before Tuesday's opening bell, is this week's main event.
And Jay Hatfield, chief investment officer for the ICAP ETF, said the CPI report will be heavily scrutinized for any signs of future interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
"Right now, consensus for CPI is -0.1%. We're forecasting a number a little bit lower than that. at 0.2% [FLASH] And I would say the chances of there being a disappointment are rising because we've had a pretty dramatic rally into this print. So, I think people are really expecting it to be that number, consensus or better. So if we print higher then that could be bad for the market."
Market-leading mega-caps including Amazon and Tesla provided a lift to the S&P 500, while shares of Apple jumped nearly 4%, days after unveiling updates to its iPhone and Apple Watch.
Drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb rose 3% following the FDA's approval of its psoriasis drug late on Friday. Share of rival Amgen, maker of the psoriasis drug Otezla, dropped 4%.
And shares of Twitter slipped amid its legal wrangling with Elon Musk, who said in his latest attempt to scrap his deal to buy the company that Twitter's failure to seek his consent before paying millions of dollars to a former security chief turned whistleblower violated the merger agreement. Twitter called his latest reasoning to back out of the deal "invalid and wrongful."
