US stocks drift toward more records following Wall Street's relentless rally

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NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting toward more records on Monday following Wall Street's seemingly relentless rally.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% after erasing what had been a modest loss earlier in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 96 points, or 0.2%, as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher. All three are on track to top their latest all-time highs, which were set on Friday.

“Every time the market seems to be running out of momentum, it fools most of us by pushing to higher heights,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.

A familiar face was again the strongest force lifting the market, Nvidia. Wall Street's most valuable company rose 3.5% after announcing a partnership to train and run OpenAI’s next generation of artificial-intelligence models. As part of the deal, Nvidia will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.

Oracle climbed 4.7% after a senior official in President Donald Trump's administration said the tech giant will receive a copy of TikTok’s algorithm to operate for U.S. users as part of the deal to keep the popular platform running in the country.

Oracle also named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its CEOs, with current CEO Safra Catz becoming executive vice chair of the technology company’s board.

Some of the market’s sharpest action was among companies agreeing to buy one another.

Pfizer said it would buy Metsera and its pipeline of medicines to potentially treat obesity in a deal initially valuing it at $4.9 billion. The price tag could go up sharply, by nearly 50%, if Metsera’s candidates win approval from federal regulators and achieve other milestones.

Metsera’s stock jumped 61.9%, and Pfizer’s added 0.7%.

ODP, which runs Office Depot and Office Max, leaped 33.2% after Atlas Holdings agreed to buy it in a deal valued at roughly $1 billion.

Anywhere Real Estate soared 45.5% after Compass said it would buy the company behind the Coldwell Banker and Corcoran brands in an all-stock deal. They said the combined company is expected to have a total enterprise value of roughly $10 billion, including debt. Compass shares sank 16.6%.

Also on the losing end of Wall Street was Coinbase Global, which fell 3.5% as stocks sank across the crypto industry following a pullback for cryptocurrency prices.

But Coinbase is still up 33% for the year so far thanks to interest in crypto, whose prices have soared to records on expectations for cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

Stocks have surged since April on hopes that Trump’s tariffs won’t derail global trade and that the Fed will deliver several cuts to rates to boost the economy. The Fed made its first cut of the year last week, and officials indicated they could deliver more through the end of this year and into next.

The U.S. stock market still faces challenges, though. Chief among them is if the Fed does not cut interest rates as many times as investors expect. The Fed is wary because lower rates can give inflation more fuel, and inflation has stubbornly remained above its 2% target.

An update on Friday will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households based on the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, and economists expect it to show a slight acceleration for last month.

Plus, stocks already look too expensive to many professional investors after their prices surged so much.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.13% from 4.14% on Friday.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.