Stocks rally even as Nvidia falls, oil drops

By Caroline Valetkevitch and Dhara Ranasinghe

NEW YORK/LONDON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Major stock indexes were gaining sharply on Monday even as Nvidia's shares fell, while oil prices extended recent losses after US President Donald Trump said he is unlikely to order fresh attacks on Iran.

Nvidia shares fell more than 5% after news of an internal investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort put his future at the AI chipmaker — the second-most valuable company in the world — under scrutiny.

Weighing on oil prices were comments by Trump on Sunday that he was highly unlikely to order fresh attacks on Iran as long as talks to end the war progressed, even though both countries reported that shipping had been hit in or near the Strait of Hormuz.

Efforts to end the Iran war have gathered pace following last week's US midterm elections in which Democrats won control of Congress.

The Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow were more than 2% higher each. AI and technology-related shares rose after a selloff last week tied to the US midterm elections and worries about increased AI and data center regulation.

"There's still going to be a bit of reckoning as far as the AI trade is concerned," said Ted Parkhill, founder and CEO of Incline Investment Management.

Earnings reports due this week from tech companies including CoreWeave, Applied Materials and Cisco Systems are set to put the profitability of AI ambitions to the test amid the massive costs of the build-out. 

CoreWeave has become a barometer of investor anxiety over AI, and the cost of insuring its debt has spiked into distressed territory recently. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1,092.95 points, or 2.13%, to 52,378.20, the S&P 500 rose 173.01 points, or 2.34%, to 7,549.79 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 651.06 points, or 2.65%, to 25,230.65.

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe rose 23.81 points, or 2.19%, to 1,109.29. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1.26%.

In Europe, banks advanced as dealmaking involving Credit Agricole and Banco BPM and strong results from Italy's UniCredit lifted the sector.

OIL EASES, US YIELDS MIXED

Elevated oil prices sparked by the Iran war have weighed on economies across the globe this year.

US crude fell 3.63% to $87.53 a barrel and Brent fell to $93.50 per barrel, down 4.9% on the day.

US Treasury yields were mixed as traders weighed recent volatility in stock markets, which has boosted demand for safe-haven bonds, against expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates next month. The yield on benchmark US 10-year notes was up 1.69 basis points at 4.876%.

US consumer price data is due on Tuesday, with bets for a December Fed rate hike rising after Friday's blowout jobs report showed US employers added 165,000 jobs last month. 

Traders price in a roughly 80% chance of a quarter-point Fed rate hike in December. 

The dollar eased. The euro was up 0.53% at $1.1203. Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.27% to 158.03.    

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch in New York and Dhara Ranasinghe in London; additional reporting by Niket Nishant and Utkarsh Hathi in Bengaluru and Jiaxing Li in Hong Kong and Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Editing by Joe Bavier and Will Dunham)