Stocks climb in anticipation of US stimulus plan, yields up slightly

NEW YORK: Stocks on world indexes climbed and US bond yields held slightly higher on Thursday as investors focused on President-elect Joe Biden's pandemic aid proposal.

On Wall Street, the Dow and Nasdaq rose to record highs early.

Biden is expected to unveil a stimulus package proposal on Thursday designed to jump-start the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

"For a while investors have been looking forward to what the picture might be like once the vaccine is fully distributed and the worst parts of the pandemic over," said Rick Meckler, partner, Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey.

"There is a little bit of a fear of 'sell on the news' that when (stimulus) is actually introduced, it won't be as large as some people like or it's possible that market will start to look at how it's going to be paid for."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 117.32 points, or 0.38%, to 31,177.79, the S&P 500 gained 9.61 points, or 0.25%, to 3,819.45 and the Nasdaq Composite added 82.92 points, or 0.63%, to 13,211.87.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.67% and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.41%.

Earlier, the Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu all rose sharply after sources told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal that plans to extend a US investment ban to the firms' stocks had been scrapped.

In the currency market, the dollar index rose 0.031%, with the euro down 0.14% to $1.214.

Bitcoin held gains after a slide of nearly $12,000 from last week's record high of $42,000. It briefly hit $40,000 on Thursday.

Benchmark 10-year notes last fell 2/32 in price to yield 1.0934%, from 1.088% late on Wednesday.

Since the beginning of the month, 10-year yields have climbed more than 20 basis points.

Oil prices were lower, as surging global coronavirus cases and new lockdowns overshadowed bullish signals from Chinese import data and US crude oil stocks draws.

Spot gold added 0.3% to $1,848.06 an ounce.