US stocks posted modest gains on Monday, with the Dow nudging up slightly, the S&P 500 adding
about 0.25%, and the Nasdaq gaining just over 0.1%. Tech shares rose
2.5%, boosting the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 to the latest in a series of record closing
highs. Among the stocks lifting the sector was Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which rose 9% ahead
of the release of its quarterly earnings. After the close, shares jumped another 35% when
HPE posted record second quarter results, prompting the company to accelerate its
long-term financial goals by 2. Years as expansion of AI data centers boosts demand for
its servers and networking products, Brad Long , chief investment officer at Wealthspire, said
it's that kind of blockbuster earnings report that continues to power the market higher. If
we look at S&P right now on track for about 20% earnings growth,
that's an incredible rate mid-cycle here. And so, you know, the markets have really been
somewhat melting up. And they've been doing that on fundamentals. Now that's helped them
look through the volatility in the Middle East . It's helped them look through an economy
that's growing and robust, but maybe not exactly where you would want it to see this
level of markets and making new highs, but it's really a story about the fundamentals.
Among other movers, shares of Nvidia rose more than 6% after the company unveiled a new chip
that puts AI capabilities directly into personal computers. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
said the chip is the result of a 3-year partnership with Microsoft to reinvent the PC
for the AI era. Shares of Microsoft added more than 2%. Other semiconductor stocks
were mixed. Q Qualcomm tumbled nearly 9%, and Intel fell more than
4.5%. But Micron rose about 6.5% and breached the $1000 mark for the
first time. And software stocks rebounded from a heavy sell-off earlier this year on AI
disruption fears. ServiceNow climbed more than 9% while IBM gained about
7.5%.