Stocks are up despite trade war

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.

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.

Facebook prompts privacy alarms

When Facebook rolled out facial recognition tools in the European Union this year, it promoted the technology as a way to help people safeguard their online identities. The company is taking a huge reputational risk in aggressively pushing the technology at a time when its data-mining practices are under heightened scrutiny in the United States and Europe. More than a dozen privacy and consumer groups argue that the company’s use of facial recognition has violated people’s privacy by not obtaining appropriate user consent. The technology can be used to remotely identify people by name without their knowledge.

— From staff, wire reports