Apple's rally pulls Wall Street to the cusp of its record

US stocks rallied on Monday to the cusp of their records. The S&P 500 climbed 1.1 per cent and pulled within 0.3 per cent of its all-time high set earlier this month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 515 points, or 1.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1.4per cent. Apple led the way and rose 3.9 per cent amid optimism about demand for its latest iPhone design. It was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 and set its own record high.

Cleveland-Cliffs jumped 21.5 per cent after the steel company's CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, said it would provide details soon about a potential deal with a major global steel producer that could mean bigger profits. He also said his company has potentially found signs of rare earths at sites in Michigan and Minnesota.

Such materials have grabbed the global spotlight after China recently put curbs on the export of its own rare earths, a move that President Donald Trump characterised as hostile. Trump's ensuing threat of higher tariffs triggered big swings for Wall Street, but the concerns eased a bit after Trump said such high tax rates on Chinese imports are unsustainable.

Another source of worry for Wall Street, from the banking industry, also appears to be easing. Stocks of smaller and mid-sized banks climbed Monday, recovering some of their losses after a couple raised alarm bells last week by warning about potentially bad loans they've made. Zions Bancorp gained 4.7 per cent Monday following its 5.1 per cent drop last week, when it said it had found “apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults” related to a couple borrowers.

Amazon's stock held up despite a widespread outage for its cloud computing service that caused disruption for internet users around the world Monday.

Amazon's stock rose 1.6 per cent. All told, the S&P 500 added 71.12 points to 6,735.13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 515.97 to 46,706.58, and the Nasdaq composite gained 310.57 to 22,990.54.

This week features a raft of big names reporting their latest quarterly results, including Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

The pressure is on companies broadly to show that their profits are growing following a torrid run of 35 per cent for the S&P 500 from a low in April.