The modest moves followed a 3.9% rise for Japan’s Nikkei 225 to a record. Shares there rose after a landslide victory for the prime minister’s political party in parliamentary elections. The thinking is that this will give Sanae Takaichi more power to implement reforms that will stimulate the economy and the market.On Wall Street, the US stock market breathed after its own big rally on Friday, its best day since May. Several concerns still hang over the market, including criticism that stocks, especially AI-related ones, have simply become too expensive. The S&P 500 is nearing last month’s all-time high.
Concerns are also mounting about whether all the massive spending by Big Tech and other companies on AI will actually generate enough profit to make the investments worthwhile.
Several other markets that have seen particularly violent moves in recent weeks also showed some more relative calm.
Bitcoin fell back below $69,000 after climbing above $71,000 last weekend. Last week, the stock was down nearly $60,000, well over halfway to October’s record high. Gold added 1.2% to climb back above $5,000 an ounce. It has seen a sharp swing after roughly doubling in price in 12 months, rising between $4,500 and almost $5,600. Silver, whose price was even wilder, rose 3.0%.
On the US stock market, Kroger climbed 6.1% after the grocer appointed a former Walmart executive as its new CEO.
On the losing side was Workday, which fell 5.9% after the AI ​​platform announced that its CEO, Carl Eschenbach, would be stepping down. Company co-founder Aneel Bhusri returns as CEO.
Transocean fell 1% after the offshore drilling company said it would buy Valaris in an all-stock deal worth $5.8 billion. Valaris rose by 22.3%.
In the bond market, government bond yields remained relatively stable ahead of several potentially market-moving reports later this week.
The US government will release its latest monthly update on the health of the labor market on Wednesday, along with consumer inflation on Friday.
Both reports could influence expectations about what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates. The Fed has suspended its interest rate cuts, but a weakening in the labor market could resume them more quickly. Too high inflation, on the other hand, could delay it for longer.
One reason the US stock market remains near records is expectations that the Fed will continue to cut rates later this year. Lower interest rates can boost the economy, but they can also worsen inflation.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond remained at 4.22%, where it was late Friday.
On foreign stock markets, indexes in Asia rose with Japan’s rise. South Korea’s Kospi rose 4.1%, while shares rose 1.8% in Hong Kong and 1.4% in Shanghai.
Movements were more modest in Europe, where indexes were mixed.
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