Wall Street drifts around its record levels following a relentless rally

Stocks have surged since April on hopes that President Donald Trump’s tariffs won’t derail global trade and that the Federal Reserve will deliver several cuts to interest rates that will boost the U.S. economy. The Fed made its first cut of the year last week, and officials indicated they could deliver more through the end of this year and into next.

“Every time the market seems to be running out of momentum, it fools most of us by pushing to higher heights,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.

The U.S. stock market still faces challenges, though. Chief among them is if the Fed does not cut interest rates as many times as investors expect. The Fed is wary because lower rates can give inflation more fuel, and inflation has stubbornly remained above its 2% target. An update on Friday will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households based on the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, and economists expect it to show a slight acceleration for last month.

Plus, stocks already look too expensive to many professional investors after their prices surged so much.

Coinbase Global fell to one of Wall Street’s bigger losses on Monday with a drop of 3.5%. But it’s still up 33% for the year so far thanks to interest in cryptocurrencies, whose prices have soared to records on expectations for more cuts to interest rates. Crypto prices gave back some of their sharp gains on Monday.

Oracle helped make up for Coinbase's loss and was one of the stronger forces pushing the S&P 500 upward. It rose 4% after a senior official in Trump's administration said the tech giant will receive a copy of TikTok’s algorithm to operate for U.S. users as part of the deal to keep the popular platform running in the country.

Oracle also named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its CEOs, with current CEO Safra Catz becoming executive vice chair of the technology company’s board.

Some of the market’s sharpest action was among companies agreeing to buy one another.

Pfizer said it would buy Metsera and its pipeline of medicines to potentially treat obesity in a deal initially valuing it at $4.9 billion. The price tag could go up sharply, by nearly 50%, if Metsera’s candidates win approval from federal regulators and achieve other milestones.

Metsera’s stock jumped 62.1%, and Pfizer’s rose 2.1%.

ODP, which runs Office Depot and Office Max, leaped 33.2% after Atlas Holdings agreed to buy it in a deal valued at roughly $1 billion.

Anywhere Real Estate soared 53.5% after Compass said it would buy the company behind the Coldwell Banker and Corcoran brands in an all-stock deal. They said the combined company is expected to have a total enterprise value of roughly $10 billion, including debt. Compass shares fell 11.2%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was at 4.14%, where it was on Friday.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.