Closing bell USA: Moderate growth - UnitedHealth and Teck Resources take off

After a subdued start to trading, the US stock markets continued their moderate gains at the beginning of the week on Tuesday. The major stock indices recently gained slightly. The largest price movements were seen in second-tier stocks.

The leading Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4 percent to 45,711.65 points. The broad-based S&P 500 stock index rose 0.3 percent to 6,512.66 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 index closed 0.3 percent higher at 23,839.80 points.

Investors are increasingly betting that the Federal Reserve will make further interest rate cuts this month after a long pause to stimulate the economy, according to traders. After all, recent labor market reports were disappointingly weak. Moreover, job growth in the twelve months up to March 2025 was far less robust than previously reported, according to the government's preliminary benchmark revision. Despite these significant cracks in the labor market, the economy is still expected to be robust enough to boost corporate profits.

However, geopolitical tensions have recently increased again, resulting in another record high for gold. According to Israeli officials, the army attacked the leadership of the Islamist Hamas group in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar.

From a corporate perspective, a billion-dollar deal in the raw materials sector was in investor focus: The British-South African mining group Anglo American and the Canadian copper producer Teck Resources plan to merge. This marks the first major transaction in the industry in some time, with Anglo American being the heavyweight.

With Teck Resources, one of the world's top five copper producers, copper will become the core of the group's future portfolio, noted Matt Britzman, equity strategist at Hargreaves Lansdown. This will position the future company well to benefit from the structural demand associated with electrification and the energy transition. Anglo shares rose by a good nine percent in London at the top of the British benchmark index, the FTSE 100. Teck's share price rose by around twelve percent.

A multi-billion dollar deal with Microsoft drove Nebius Group shares to a record high. Recently, they recorded a gain of over 50 percent. The Dutch cloud infrastructure specialist for artificial intelligence (AI) applications had previously announced an order from the software giant for the delivery of AI infrastructure. Microsoft shares gained moderately.

UnitedHealth gained 8.4 percent at the top of the Dow after the health insurer reaffirmed its full-year adjusted profit target. UnitedHealth also announced that the number of enrollees in its top-rated Medicare plans will be in line with its own forecasts.

With material from dpa-AFX.