GLOBAL MARKETS-Equities gain with chipmakers; oil rises to 5-week high
Updates to early afternoon
By Caroline Valetkevitch and Ankur Banerjee
NEW YORK/SINGAPORE, July 21 (Reuters) - Major stock indexes rose on Tuesday with the Nasdaq and chipmaker shares surging, while oil prices climbed to a five-week high amid rising tensions in the Iran conflict.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields reached a two-month high as traders considered whether the renewed spike in oil prices will feed through to consumer prices and raise the odds of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes further.
Two oil tankers carrying Saudi crude to Asia reversed course in the Red Sea after threats from Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis.
U.S. crude CLc1 rose 2.32% to $85.16 a barrel and Brent LCOc1 rose to $91.08 per barrel, up 2.08% on the day.
"Investors are not necessarily thinking the war is going to end anytime soon," said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts, but he said the conflict's impact on oil prices may be seen as overdone.
Investors also waited for corporate earnings this week, with results from Intel INTC.O, Alphabet GOOGL.O and others due. Market watchers are interested in whether the AI trade has more room to run, given sky-high profit expectations for the second quarter.
Earnings are "really the key as to how the market performs in the short window," Zaro said.
An index of semiconductors .SOX was up more than 5%. The index ended Friday more than 20% below its late-June record closing high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 395.97 points, or 0.76%, to 52,235.23, the S&P 500 .SPX rose 63.60 points, or 0.85%, to 7,506.88 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC rose 342.90 points, or 1.34%, to 25,850.97.
European stocks rose, with technology and mining shares gaining. The pan-European STOXX 600 .STOXX index was up 0.56%.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS rose 11.29 points, or 1.02%, to 1,116.79.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes US10YT=RR gained 3.62 basis points to 4.634% and reached 4.640%, the highest since May 20. Traders are pricing in at least one rate hike from the Fed this year, according to money markets.
Trade was also in the spotlight. The Canadian dollar CAD= weakened 0.15% versus the greenback to C$1.409 per dollar, after the U.S. imposed a new tariff of 50% on a wide range of Canadian products in response to Ottawa's "discriminatory treatment" of American-made cars, alcohol and dairy goods.
U.S. and Mexican trade negotiators will meet for a third round of bilateral talks to try to push forward with revising the North American trade agreement.
The dollar index =USD, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro,
rose 0.17% to 101.12, with the euro EUR= down 0.05% at $1.1408.
