By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com — The S&P 500 jumped Tuesday, as easing Russia-Ukraine tensions sparked renewed appetite for stocks, with a chip-led climb in tech stocks leading the charge.

They rose 1.5% and gained 1.2% (or 411 points), respectively.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia was “of course” not looking to go war with Ukraine, and pointed to proposals laid out by Moscow as a basis for finding a diplomatic resolution to Ukraine’s security crisis.

Do we really want it? Yes, but not. Putin responded to a question regarding whether Russia would like to declare war in Europe.

Putin has demanded the U.S. and its allies provide guarantees that Ukraine won’t be allowed to join the NATO military alliance, which he has flagged as a threat to Russia.

Although the U.S. rejected the request, it was believed that it offered to limit missile deployments in Europe as well as restrictions on military drills.

The move helped further cool fears of an imminent Russia invasion of Ukraine and followed reports that Russia had pulled some of its troops back from Ukraine’s boarder.

The reduction of Russia-Ukraine tensions has restored investor risk appetite. Tech stocks are in high demand, particularly chips stocks.

The iShares Semiconductor ETF NASDAQ : jumped by more than 4%. This was aided by an 8% rally at NVIDIA (NASDAQ ) before Wednesday’s release of its quarterly results.

The chipmaker’s gaming and data center businesses are expected to help it deliver “a significant beat and raise,”  Piper Sandler said in a note, according to Barons

Big tech such as Apple (NASDAQ :), Amazon(NASDAQ :), Microsoft, (NASDAQ 🙂 and Alphabet were all on the rise. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ 🙂 however was a notable underperformer.

Facebook has agreed to pay $90million to resolve a long-running privacy suit alleging that the social media company kept track of users’ online activity, even when they had logged off.

On the other hand, energy stocks were the only sector that was in red due to a drop in oil prices due to geopolitical tensions.

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:), Marathon Oil (NYSE:), and Diamondback Energy  (NASDAQ:) led the declines in the sector.

Wall Street risk-on sentiment returned, prompting investors to sell U.S. Treasuries. Yields rose as more data indicated inflation pressures.

After a December 0.3% increase, the January 1.0% rise was more than anticipated. Year-over-year, producer prices increased 9.7% in January. This is the highest gain since 2010.

The inflation report arrives a day ahead of the Federal Reserve’s minutes for the January meeting that could provide insights into the central bank’s thinking on tightening monetary policy.

The odds of a 50% rate hike at the Fed’s meeting next stood at about 61% versus 27.9% a week ago, according to Investing.com’s

Virgin Galactic’s stock rose 32% due to increased commercial activity following the announcement by the space tourism company that it will begin selling tickets for the general public on February 16.