Wall Street, tech stocks fired up by Twitter rally after Musk purchase

Wall Street's three major equity indexes rose about 1% on the average with shares of Twitter, particularly, outperforming on news that flamboyant tech-entrepreneur and influencer Elon Musk had become the largest shareholder in the microblogging site.

The three indexes - the S & P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite - also rose broadly for a second day in a row after closing first quarter trading last week with the biggest slump since the coronavirus breakout of two years ago.

Twitter jumped 27% in price, closing up $10.66 at $49.97 per share after Musk, the chief executive of electric carmaker Tesla, bought almost 73.5 million shares in the company amounting to a passive stake of 9.2%.

Musk' purchase, worth nearly $3 billion, comes less than two weeks after he criticized the company, polling people on Twitter about whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles. An entrepreneur known for courting controversy and for getting into trouble with stock market regulators, Musk has also polled Twitter users on whether he should sell his stake in Tesla. Besides these, he also constantly tweets about cryptocurrencies, another one of his passions.

Wedbush Securities said it expects Musk's buy into Twitter to be the start of his bid to raise his influence on the site.

"We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter," the broker said in a note.

The rally on Twitter helped fire up Wall Street's broader tech sector.

The Nasdaq Composite - which houses the biggest technology names of the world, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google - closed up 271 points, or 1.9%, at 14,533.

The S & P500 - which groups the top 500 US stocks - finished up 38 points, or 0.8%, at 4,584.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which lists travel, aviation and cross-industry value stocks, settled up 104 points, or 0.3%, at 34,922.