By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 climbed higher Tuesday, underpinned by a surge in tech and growing hopes of a de-escalation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict after Moscow pledged to reduce military operations in Kyiv. 

It rose by 1.2%. The added 0.91% or 318 points to the gain 1.91%.

Russia views Russia’s pledge to decrease military activity in the Kyiv-Chernihiv regions as a way to build trust in negotiations with Ukraine, which could eventually lead to an accord that can be crucial to ending the conflict. 

There are doubts about the strength of the olive branch offered by Moscow as Russia’s progress toward Kyiv has stalled recently, and there wasn’t any mention of cutting back military operations in the South of Ukraine, where fighting has intensified.

The prospect of progress at the talks were boosted a day earlier after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was open to discussing some of the Kremlin’s demands around neutrality.

Oil prices were dominated by Russia and Ukraine headlines, but they fell, pushing energy stocks down as investors reduced their anticipations of a prolonged conflict that could disrupt supply.  

Recent gains were aided by the growth areas of tech and consumer discretionary.

After a slow start to the week, chip stocks saw a rebound as NVIDIA (NASDAQ 🙂 rose following Wall Street’s positive commentary.

Tigress Financial has raised the price target for Nvidia from $400 to $410 per share. The reason is new products and an increasing need for data centers.

Uber Technologies (NYSE 🙂 rose more than 7 percent in other tech markets. The ride-hailing firm is close to a contract with a San Francisco taxi service, allowing it to add taxis from that city onto its platform.

The broader real estate market was also boosted by CBRE (NYSE:), Extra Space Storage (NYSE:) Equinix (NASDAQ :).

Nielsen Holdings, NYSE:) Holdings gained 20% due to reports by private equity investors of a $16 billion rating for the company.

FedEx (NYSE 🙂 surged more than 3% upon the logistic announcement that Fred Smith, Fred Smith’s founder and chief executive officer will be stepping aside on June 1.

Raj Subramaniam will replace Smith as president and chief operating officers. The transition is expected to be “seamless,” Oppenheimer said.  

“In recent years Mr. Smith appeared to have been ceding an increasing amount of operational and investor-facing responsibility to his top reports, particularly Mr. Subramaniam,” it added.

The move higher in stocks hasn’t taken focus away from the bond market, in which a key part of the Treasury yield curve briefly inverted, exacerbating concerns about a potential recession ahead.

Shortly, the yield on a 10-year Treasury dropped below that of a 2-year Treasury. This was the first such drop since 2019.  Every recession in the past 40 years has been preceded by a yield curve inversion.