Natural gas was the biggest winner, rallying 7.5 percent on the Nymex for the largest monthly advance in a year, partly as unusually cool weather. Soybeans jumped 7.3 percent on the Chicago Board of Trade, as drought-reduced crops in South America signaled an 11 percent decline in global output, the most since 1984. Prices reached $15.07 a bushel on April 30, the highest since July 2008.
Crude oil futures rose 1.8 percent to $104.87 a barrel in New York on speculation that increased U.S. consumer spending and incomes will help boost demand. Gold retreated for the third straight month in the absence of further quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve.
Stocks Retreat
The MSCI All Country World Index of stocks retreated for the first time since December after rallying 11.3 percent in the January through March period. The MSCI index is valued at 14.8 times reported profit, 16.4 percent below the average from the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The S&P 500 lost 0.75 percent while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.01 percent. From AT&T Inc. to 3M Co., about 74 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 that reported quarterly results since April 10 topped the average analyst estimate, data compiled by Bloomberg as of April 24 showed.
While corporate earnings "have come in strong, ''the economy is going to just sputter along here,'' Glenmede's Mahoney said. ''You have to be a little bit cautious.''
Second Recession
Spain's economy contracted in the first quarter, putting the euro region's fourth-largest economy into its second recession since 2009, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said yesterday.
The Italian government, which had vowed to balance the budget in 2013, now expects a shortfall of 0.5 percent of gross domestic product next year, the Cabinet said April 18 in an e- mailed statement after meeting in Rome to revise its three-year economic plan. The deficit of 0.1 percent previously estimated for 2013 won't be reached until 2014.
''Contagion is in the air," David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and former Bank of England policy maker, said April 26 in a telephone interview. "This is the inevitable consequence of failed austerity."