Dow Rallies 500+ to Kick off February



U.S. equities rose on Monday as Wall Street began a new month of trading, with investors looking past the recent losses in silver and bitcoin

The Dow Jones Industrials zoomed 515.19 points, or 1.1%, to 49,407.66.

The S&P 500 index recovered 37.47 points to 6,976.50, helped by rise in Oracle shares after the data center company announced it’s going to raise up to $50 billion to build additional capacity for cloud customers

The NASDAQ recouped 130.29 points to 22,592.11.

Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the first time since April, a sign investors were taking more risk off the table following Friday’s sharp declines in gold and silver.

Silver, which has more than doubled over the past 12 months, plunged around 30% on Friday. That marked the metal’s worst one-day performance since 1980. Gold also dropped around 10%.

The cryptocurrency, as well as the two metals, later came off their respective lows Monday, which helped trim losses in equities and ease risk-off sentiment.

Bitcoin last traded around $78,000, while spot gold and spot silver were down 4% and 5%, respectively. Bitcoin proxy Strategy also saw losses, falling 6%.

Wall Street also turned its attention to Nvidia as questions over the artificial intelligence loomed. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Nvidia’s plans to pour $100 billion into OpenAI had stalled, with chipmaker execs expressing doubt about the deal. Nvidia shares were down around than 2%.

More than 100 S&P 500 companies are due to report this week. That includes Amazon and Alphabet — shares of both names were higher Monday. The overall reporting season has been strong thus far, but there have been some high-profile post-earnings sell-offs, including Microsoft.

Disney kicked off this week with reporting earnings that beat analyst expectations. However, the stock fell 7% after the company warned of headwinds from international travelers attending domestic parks.

Prices for the 10-year Treasury faded Monday, raising yields to 4.28% from Friday’s 4.25%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Oil prices slid $3.02 to $62.19 U.S. a barrel.

Gold prices skidded $49.50 to $4,695.70 U.S. an ounce.