United States stock markets closed higher early this week, with a sharp upsurge in tech stocks. The upsurge comes amid Wall Street's attempts to rally through a rough August 2023. In any case, the Nasdaq Composite rose by 1% to lead the gains on Monday. The stock index rebounded from two consecutive sharp weekly losses. On the other hand, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed by about 0.1%, while the benchmark S&P 500 rose by around 0.6%.
These moves came amid forthcoming US consumer health updates. The consumer update will cover retail earnings and sales numbers from US’s premier retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Home Depot. Analysts are also following up on Federal Reserve minutes release on interest policy after the central bank resumed the rate hike trend. Meanwhile, other mega-growth stocks increased, including Amazon and Alphabet.
Chipmaker Micron Tech closed with a 6.1% rise, Amazon gained 1.6%, and Alphabet rose 1.4%. Thus, stock analysts concluded that it was the first day in a long period that tech stocks outperformed. The NVidia report will likely boost the tech industry, with companies rallying optimism about the rise of AI technologies worldwide. The report remains crucial due to the massive shift backdrop in AI spending and an exceptional supply-demand imbalance.
But Tesla electric car manufacturer fell by 1.2% after the company announced a price cut in China on model Y models. Therefore, the market focus is on US retailers’ quarterly earnings data. The data will include July retail sales, which will help shape the US interest rates direction. Analysts believe that the US Federal Reserve will likely leave the borrowing cost unchanged. In the meantime, the Goldman Sachs report pushed a baseline forecast for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in the 2024 second quarter.
Other investors have kept a global market sentiment lid with concerns about China’s property sector after Country Garden (China’s top private property developer) delayed private onshore bond payments for the first time. Yet, PayPal stocks climbed by 2.8% as the company named Alex Chriss as the new CEO. The new PayPal chief executive officer was a former top executive at Intuit, a software firm. AMC Entertainment stocks fell by almost 36%.
Overall, Hawaiian Electric shares dropped by about 34% as utility equipment scrutiny mounted over the deadly fires in the Maui coastal town. While the average traded shares for the last 20 sessions stood at 10.9 billion, the US exchanges volume remained light at 9.7 billion on Monday. Above all, rising stocks were lower than declining stocks, with the S&P 500 maintaining a 1:1.1 ratio. The NASDAQ reported 192 new lows and 50 new highs, and the S&P 500 recorded 11 new lows and eight new highs.
