Stock market today: Dow and S&P 500 soar to record highs, Nasdaq rallies on hopes for a Hormuz deal
Stocks touched record highs on Tuesday as markets eyed Middle East talks and earnings rolled in, with SpaceX's (SPCX) after-hours earnings in focus.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led stocks higher, surging over 2.6%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) added 1.8%, closing at a record high. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) built on its own record high on Monday with a 1.8% gain, adding 900 points.
A slew of important earnings updates helped lift stocks on Tuesday. Caterpillar (CAT), the Dow's second-largest component by weight and an industrial beneficiary of the AI build-out, rallied after its sales and revenue topped $20 billion for the first time.
Palantir (PLTR) stock also soared nearly 30% following what CEO Alex Karp deemed an "otherworldly" quarter. In the second quarter, Palantir's commercial revenue from the US government surged 90% year over year.
That helped propel a rally in chip and tech stocks, as the PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX) jumped 6% and stocks such as Intel (INTC), Micron (MU), and Nvidia (NVDA) gained momentum.
Other companies reporting earnings on Tuesday include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), McDonald's Corporation (MCD), and Spotify (SPOT). The standout, however, will be SpaceX's first quarterly earnings report since going public. The stock has been in free-fall since its IPO in June, sending a warning signal to other megacap companies looking to enter public markets.
Crude oil prices, meanwhile, continued to slide after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that there's "a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow" to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Investors had received mixed signals about Middle East talks after President Trump called off a large-scale attack on Iran to restart talks. Iran disputed the claim that the two sides were talking, provoking frustration from Trump, who called the Islamic Republic "unbelievably duplicitous" in a Truth Social post.
On the economic front, the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) will be the first key piece of labor market data released this week in the run-up to the all-important July jobs report on Friday.