ASX set to rise, Wall Street advances as Nvidia rebounds

Outside of AI-related industries, stocks held up fairly well on Monday, and they were mixed Tuesday following a set of mixed profit reports.

Royal Caribbean steamed 12 per cent higher after the cruise operator topped analysts’ profit expectations for the end of 2024. It benefited from stronger-than-expected demand from customers booking trips closer to the time of departure. The company also gave a profit forecast for the first three months of 2025 that topped analysts’ expectations.

JetBlue Airways, meanwhile, lost a quarter of its value, 25.7 per cent, despite reporting a milder loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company expects its costs outside of fuel to rise more quickly at the start of 2025 than a key underlying measure of its revenue.

Later this week will come profit reports from some of Wall Street’s most influential companies, including Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Tesla.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 55.42 points to 6,067.70. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 136.77 to 44,850.35, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 391.75 to 19,733.59.

In the bond market, which had been driving much of Wall Street’s action before Monday’s upheaval, Treasury yields held relatively steady.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.53 per cent, where it was late Monday. It’s been climbing in recent months as traders pared back expectations for how many cuts the Federal Reserve will deliver to short-term interest rates this year. The US economy remains solid, and worries are high that tariffs and other policies potentially coming from President Donald Trump could put upward pressure on inflation.

A report showing confidence among US consumers wasn’t as strong as economists expected made relatively small waves in the bond market. The more anticipated event will come on Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve will announce its latest decision on interest rates.

The widespread expectation is that it will leave the federal funds rate alone. If that proves true, it would be the first meeting where the Fed did not cut rates to give the economy a boost since it began doing so in September.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.4 per cent as SoftBank Group Corp. stock extended its losses, sinking 5.2 per cent.

Fuji Media Holdings, rocked by a sex scandal, rose 3 per cent after a marathon news conference by its top executives that lasted more than 10 hours, in which two of them resigned to take responsibility for the scandal. Fuji’s stock price has zigzagged in recent months amid Japanese magazine reports about “a problem” involving an anchorwoman and a Japanese male star. He has subsequently announced his retirement.

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