Musk's Twitter 'like' Boosts Wall Street

Wall Street's main indexes rose on Monday, boosted by megacap tech and growth stocks and a surge in Twitter after Elon Musk revealed his stake in the company, amid cautionary signals in the bond market and talk of more sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

Gains were relatively concentrated as the financial sector fell, as did defensive groups such as utilities and healthcare.

Shares of Twitter surged 27.1 percent after Tesla Chief Executive Musk revealed a 9.2 percent stake in the micro-blogging site, making him its largest shareholder. Shares of other social media companies also rose.

Tesla shares rose 5.6 percent after the company on Saturday reported record electric vehicle deliveries for the first quarter.

"A lot of the news we are seeing today is generally positive for technology," said Mona Mahajan, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3 percent, to 34,922, the S&P 500 gained 0.81 percent, at 4,583 and the Nasdaq Composite added 1.9 percent, at 14,533.

Along with Tesla, gains in Apple, Amazon.com and Microsoft gave boosts to the S&P 500.

Stocks have rebounded in recent weeks after a rocky start to the year amid concerns about the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy to fight inflation and the war in Ukraine. The S&P 500 is down about 4 percent so far in 2022, after being down as much as 12.5 percent.

Investors remained concerned about the Ukraine crisis, which has led to a spike in commodity prices that has worsened the outlook for already high inflation.

In company news, Starbucks Corp shares fell 3.7 percent after former CEO Howard Schultz announced the suspension of the company's stock repurchasing programme. (Reuters)