Wall Street rallies with inflation, Fed on tap

• 13-Dec-2022
• 301

Wall Street stocks, oil prices and U.S. Treasury yields all rose on Monday as investors took an optimistic stance ahead of the last round of transatlantic central bank interest rate hikes this year, hoping that the now-hefty pace of increases in borrowing costs will finally slow. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 1.6%, the S&P 500 gained 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose about 1.25%. Boosting the indexes was a nearly 3% rise in shares of Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), following the software maker's plans to buy a stake in the London Stock Exchange Group (LON:LSEG). After a multi-week decline, oil prices also jumped as a key crude pipeline supplying the U.S. closed and Russia threatened a production cut, even as China's loosening COVID-19 restrictions bolstered the fuel demand outlook. [O/R] The dollar was virtually flat in thin trading as investors awaited in the release of U.S. consumer price index (CPI) data for November on Tuesday, when a slowdown in core annual inflation is anticipated. The MSCI all country stock index gained 0.55%, still down nearly 18% so far this year, wiping out all gains from 2021. In Europe, the STOXX index of 600 companies was down about 0.5% as investors awaited interest rate moves. In Asia, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 1.3%, erasing some of the previous week's gains stemming from optimism that China is finally opening up its economy with the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. Japan's Nikkei eased 0.2%.