Financial Markets                      06/01 09:29

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices are rising Monday following the latest fighting 
to threaten the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, but Wall Street isn't very worried, and 
U.S. stocks are hanging around their records.

   The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged from its all-time high set on Friday. 
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 130 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. 
Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was flat. Both are also coming off 
records.

   Science Applications International Corp. jumped 12.3% after becoming the 
latest U.S. company to report bigger profit for the latest quarter than 
analysts expected. SAIC also raised its forecasts for upcoming financial 
results after winning several contracts from the U.S. Department of Homeland 
Security, army and other agencies.

   A cavalcade of such profit reports has helped the U.S. stock market push to 
records even though the war with Iran has driven up the price of oil and 
inflation by slowing the deliveries of crude coming from the Persian Gulf. The 
price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 5% to 
$95.69, well above its level of roughly $70 from before the war.

   That hurt stocks of companies with already big fuel bills. United Airlines 
lost 2.7%, and Royal Caribbean Group fell 1.6%.

   But hope seems to be remaining on Wall Street that the United States and 
Iran will still reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil 
tankers to move freely again.

   Strength from several market heavyweights also helped to push aside such 
fears.

   Nvidia was the strongest force lifting the market and rose 3.8% after CEO 
Jensen Huang announced several updates at a conference. Among them, he said the 
company's next-generation artificial-intelligence platform, Vera Rubin, is 
ramping into full production. That helped calm some investor concerns about 
potential delays, analysts said.

   What Nvidia does matters immensely to the U.S. stock market because it's the 
biggest in terms of overall market value. That means the movements for its 
stock carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other's.

   And Wall Street's biggest companies have been growing so much that they're 
dominating the market. The top 10 stocks control nearly half the S&P 500's 
total market value, a 40-year high, according to Thomas Carroll, equity market 
strategist at Stifel.

   That has worked well as those largely Big Tech companies have shot higher 
thanks to AI exuberance. But it could also weigh on the index if the market's 
leadership broadens, Carroll warns. And a key indicator he follows about market 
breadth "is signaling a rotation is coming," he wrote in a report.

   Even if most stocks end up rising in such a rotation, declines for Big Tech 
heavyweights could nevertheless drag on S&P 500 index funds.

   Elsewhere on Wall Street, Berkshire Hathaway slipped 0.5% after it said it 
would buy Taylor Morrison Home for $6.8 billion. It's one of the first big 
acquisitions announced by the company under Greg Abel's leadership following 
famed investor Warren Buffett.

   Taylor Morrison Home jumped 22.4%.

   IBM rallied 5.9% after analysts raised expectations for the tech giant's 
stock price. Shares of IBM also closed up 12% on Friday, giving it a nearly 30% 
gain in May, when the New York company announced a $1 billion government grant 
to help it build a quantum chip foundry.

   In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with oil prices. The yield for the 
10-year Treasury climbed to 4.50% from 4.45% late Friday.

   High yields in bond markets worldwide recently have threatened to slow 
economies and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. 
High yields have already forced the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its 
most expensive level in nine months, and they could curtail companies' 
borrowing to build the AI data centers that have supported the U.S. economy's 
growth recently.

   In stock markets abroad, indexes fell in Europe following a stronger finish 
in Asia.

   Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.9%, and South Korea's Kospi jumped 3.7% to hit 
records led by technology-related stocks, as investors continued to see growth 
in AI and other advanced technologies.

   ___

   AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

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