Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief on Monday after Hurricane Irma’s last-minute shift westward eased fears about widespread devastation in Florida and helped propel the US stock market towards fresh records.

Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys on Sunday as a category four hurricane, but the eye of the storm missed Miami and steadily lost energy before hitting the mainland near Naples, then ploughed through the largely uninhabited Everglades. On Monday morning, it was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Irma had roared through the Caribbean as a massive category five hurricane, raising fears it could become the most damaging storm in US history. But its eleventh-hour weakening over Cuba spared big metropolitan areas from carnage, triggering a jump in insurance stocks in particular, which climbed 1.8 per cent higher by midday in New York.