London Stock Exchange – US close: Stocks continue to rally amid stimulus optimism

Wall Street stocks extended last week’s rally on Monday as the Dow Jones secured its longest daily winning streak since August as market participants remained optimistic about further Covid-19 stimulus.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.76% at 31,385.76, while the S&P 500 was 0.74% firmer at 3,915.59 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.95% stronger at 13,987.64.

The Dow closed 237.52 points higher on Monday, extending gains recorded in Friday’s session that also saw the S&P 500 closed at a record high.

Corporate earnings will be in focus again this week, with the likes of Cisco, Twitter, Yelp, Uber, MGM, Mattel, GM, Coca-Cola and Disney all set to report over the next five days.

Loews said on Monday that it had swung to a full-year loss of $931.0m, while toymaker Hasbro reported $1.0bn in e-commerce sales for 2020 as a whole.

After the close, video games publisher Take-Two Interactive beat earnings per share estimates by $0.30 and came in ahead of expectations for net bookings throughout its most recent quarter.

Turning to the Covid-19 pandemic itself, the US has now recorded more than 27.67m total cases of the coronavirus, claiming the lives of more than 475,890 Americans in the process.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen implored Congress to pass President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 stimulus package over the weekend, stating the US could return to full employment by 2022 if it did so. Both the Senate and House passed a budget resolution on Friday, starting a reconciliation process that would allow the President’s $1.9trn rescue package to be pushed through the Democratic-held Senate thanks to an easy majority.

Bitcoin was also drawing an amount of investor attention as the cryptocurrency’s price shot up to an all-time high of more than $44,000 after Tesla revealed it had bought $1.5bn worth of the digital asset and vowed to shortly accept it as a payment method for its vehicles.

On the macro front, the January Survey of Consumer Expectations showed median inflation expectations were unchanged at 3% at both the one- and three-year horizons, while median year-ahead expectations for home price changes rose 0.4% to 4.0%, the highest reading since May 2014.

Elsehwere, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland president Loretta Mester said US monetary policy would stay accommodative for a “very long time” given the economy’s way to go before hitting the Central Bank’s targets of maximum employment and price stability.