Stocks jump as trade-war worries take a back seat

NEW YORK » Never mind the trade war. Here comes earnings season.

U.S. stocks climbed with other markets on Monday as concerns about trade tensions between the United States and the rest of the world took a back seat. The calendar for upcoming weeks is full of companies telling investors how much profit they made during the spring, and the expectation is for another quarter of gangbusters growth.

That plus Friday’s report showing U.S. hiring remains strong have helped to support markets despite the world’s two largest economies imposing dueling tariffs on each other at the end of last week.

The S&P 500 rose 24.35 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,784.17. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 320.11, or 1.3 percent, to 24,776.59, and the Nasdaq composite gained 67.81, or 0.9 percent, to 7,756.20.

It’s the third straight day that the S&P 500 has climbed at least 0.8 percent. It follows a rocky few months where some investors sold stocks on the assumption that a full-blown, harmful trade war was a certainty. Others still expect negotiated settlements to be the final result.

“The market in the second quarter tried to price in this whole thing, and it was probably a little too fast for that,” said Matthew Miskin, market strategist with John Hancock Investments. “There still are a lot of negative developments happening here, but before earnings season typically tends to be a sweet spot for the market. “

Stocks often rise in anticipation of healthy earnings reports, Miskin said, and the results for