Wall Street ends up ahead of CPI; JPMorgan, financial shares gain

NEW YORK, July 11 (Reuters) – US stocks rose on Tuesday, helped by optimism ahead of key inflation reports and as JPMorgan and other financial shares gained before earnings later this week.

Investors are looking for further clues on whether price pressures are abating and if the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its interest rate hiking cycle.

US consumer price data is due on Wednesday, while a producer prices report is due on Thursday. Several Fed officials said this week the central bank would likely need to raise rates further to curb inflation but that the end of its tightening cycle was getting close.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) shares advanced 1.6% after Jefferies upgraded the stock to a “buy” ahead of the bank’s quarterly results due on Friday.

Reports from JPMorgan and other big banks later this week are expected to unofficially kick off the start of the second-quarter reporting period. The S&P banking index rose 1.5%.

Energy shares also jumped along with sharply higher oil prices.

“It’s nice to see the market broadening out here ahead of earnings,” said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York.

“We’ve got a lot of data that’s going to be coming in here … and expectations for the third quarter are also a concern in terms of any guidance companies might be giving on earnings calls.”

The S&P 500 is up 15.6% for the year so far, with technology up 40% in that period.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 317.02 points, or 0.93%, to 34,261.42, the S&P 500 gained 29.73 points, or 0.67%, to 4,439.26 and the Nasdaq Composite added 75.22 points, or 0.55%, to 13,760.70.

Wall Street banks are expected to report higher profits for the second quarter as rising interest payments offset a reduction in deal-making.

Among the S&P 500’s biggest gainers on the day, shares of videogame maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI) jumped 10% after a US judge ruled that Microsoft (MSFT) may proceed with its planned acquisition of the “Call of Duty” game maker.

Salesforce (CRM) shares rose 3.9% after the cloud services firm said it would increase the prices of some of its cloud and marketing tools, a first in seven years.

Also, Amazon.com (AMZN) shares edged up 1.3% with its “Prime Day” 48-hour discount shopping event going on this week.

Volume on US exchanges was 9.97 billion shares, compared with the 11.1 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.65-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.82-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 51 new 52-week highs and 1 new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 91 new highs and 40 new lows.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; Additional reporting by Johann M Cherian and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Matthew Lewis)