Wall St gains as Tesla leads megacap rally; inflation data in focus

Wall Street rose on Monday as Tesla led gains in megacaps, while investors awaited inflation data due later this week for clues on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest-rate path.

Tesla (TSLA.O) jumped 5.8% as Morgan Stanley upgraded it to “overweight” from “equal-weight”, saying the EV maker’s Dojo supercomputer could boost the company’s market value by nearly $600 billion.

Shares of other megacaps including Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O) rose between 0.4% and 1.1%.

The S&P 500 consumer discretionary stocks (.SPLRCD), up 1.6%, led gains in major S&P 500 sectors.

Investors now await the crucial consumer and producer prices data as well as retail sales numbers due later this week.

The consumer price data on Wednesday will indicate whether the U.S. economy is on track for a so-called soft landing that could allow the Fed to bring down inflation without sharply impacting growth.

“The inflation numbers should be expected to be at least flat if not higher and most likely slightly higher as compared to the continued decline we’ve seen since last year, said Hugh Anderson, managing director at HighTower Advisors.

“I expect at least one more increase, but this is at best. Certainly no cuts, and I don’t expect to see cuts for quite some time until we see a dramatic decline in employment.”

Wall Street’s main indexes had logged weekly losses on Friday after a recent uptick in oil prices and stronger-than-expected economic data fueled concerns of sticky inflation and interest rates staying higher for longer.

This report’s information was first seen on REUTERS; to read more, click this link.