Markets rise as they head for “spectacular finale”

Markets rose modestly on Monday.

The S&P 500 and STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.1 percent while the Nikkei 225 was up less than 0.1 percent.

Bonds also rose, with the US 10-year Treasury yield declining two basis points to 2.316 percent.

Oil rose, West Texas Intermediate gaining 3.1 percent to hit its highest level since June 2015.

While the gains on Monday were small, Sue Chang at MarketWatch said that “tax cuts along with robust earnings may be setting stocks up for what could be a truly spectacular finale to a memorable year”.

“This is a very constructive situation for the big picture investment story. We could be going into a brief period of piling up, where sentiment ignores valuation and sticks to momentum,” she quoted Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global, as saying.

Indeed, strategists at Academy Securities wrote that the biggest worry on Wall Street right now might be that no one is worried.