Stocks extended their relief rally for a second day on Thursday as market optimism from the two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran boosted sentiment.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA) climbed over 275 points to settle at 48,185.80, while the broader market S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY) rose 0.6% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQ: QQQ) advanced 0.8% to close at 6,824.66 and 22,822.41, respectively.
Investor sentiment was unfazed by crude oil futures briefly topping $100 per barrel again on Thursday, as traders cheered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his country has agreed to open negotiations with Lebanon. West Texas Intermediate rose more than 3% to close at $97.87 per barrel, and international benchmark Brent crude futures increased over 1% to settle at $95.92 a barrel.
The ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, which President Donald Trump agreed to on Tuesday, is contingent on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz -- which Tehran has agreed to for two weeks as long as military strikes from the U.S. and Israel are halted.
On the economic front, consumer inflation rose in-line with economist estimates in February, according to a Commerce Department report on Thursday, but the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge held above the central bank's 2% target ahead of the start of the U.S.-Iran war.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 2.8% annually in February, while the core PCE index -- which excludes food and energy prices -- rose by a seasonally adjusted 3%. On a monthly basis, both all-items and core PCE rose 0.4%.
"The increase in the core metric, the best long-run predictor of overall inflation, is far more problematic for central bankers (who) are now six years into a journey well above the Fed's 2 percent inflation target, whether the ceasefire in the Gulf holds or hostilities resume in the near term," said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, quoted by Yahoo!Finance.
In corporate news, shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) rose on Thursday after announcing an expanded infrastructure deal with Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) to provide the social media giant $21 billion worth of cloud coputing capacity through 2032.
"The dedicated capacity will be deployed across multiple locations and will include some of the initial deployments of the NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) Vera Rubin platform. This distributed approach is designed to optimize performance, resilience, and scalability for Meta's AI operations," CoreWeave said in a release.
For Friday, market participates will be met with another consumer inflation report and a preliminary reading on consumer sentiment as Wall Street heads towards a week of gains.