Stocks maintained positive momentum on Monday after a strong week on Wall Street.
The S&P 500 rose 0.72% to end at 7,537.43, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.12% to 26,121.16, as markets kicked off the new trading week after the US Independence Day holiday on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 155.84 points, or 0.29%, to close at a record high of 53,055.91. The 30-share index also hit an intraday high during the session.
Technology stocks were mostly up. The State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF ( XLK ) added nearly 2%, led by Western Digital’s 7% gain and Teradyne’s 2.8% jump. Marvell Technology rose more than 1%, and Oracle rose 2.5%.
The Dow rose nearly 2% last week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also posted sharp gains last week, advancing by 1.8% and 2.1%, respectively, SEEbiz reports.
Those gains came even as semiconductors – the driving force behind many of the market’s gains this year – faltered last week and investors trimmed exposure to chipmakers and turned to other sectors. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) fell 3.2%, marking its second straight week of losses. However, the fund ended the first six months of the year with a gain of more than 80% and was up about 2% on Monday.
“Expectations are really high, so I don’t know if you’re going to see as much growth in these stocks in the second half of the year as we saw in the first half,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial. “As long as they confirm that the fundamentals are strong, I think they could probably go up a little bit.”
In this sense, Saglimbene expects that in the coming months there will be oscillations between the leaders in the artificial intelligence trade and the wider market. In particular, this depends on whether AI-related companies can confirm their prospects and achieve “strong” profits, he added.
