Stocks advanced on Tuesday with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average setting record highs intraday as tech names marched higher and chip stocks reemerged as a key market driver.
SpaceX rose 6%. After the market closes, attention will be on Elon Musk's AI and rocket company, which reports its inaugural quarterly numbers. Wall Street projects sales of $6.8 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of $2.1 billion.
The artificial-intelligence trade made a strong comeback after Reuters reported the U.S. plans to ban imports of new China-made data-center parts. Coherent and Lumentum gained 15% and 9.5%, respectively. Corning was up 9.5% while Marvell gained 14% and Micron rose 8.4%.
Advanced Micro Devices advanced 8.2%. The chip company is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings after the close of trading on the heels of a rout of chip stocks in July that had corrected a fierce spring rally.
SK Hynix rose 6.2% to $151.61. William Blair initiated coverage of the South Korean chip maker's U.S. listing with an Outperform rating and a $260 price target. That price target represents 82% upside from Monday's closing price.
Sandisk gained 11%. SK Hynix and Sandisk announced the release of a technical blueprint for their high bandwidth flash technology on Tuesday.
Palantir surged 29%, leading the S&P 500, after the data analytics software developer reported strong second-quarter earnings. CEO Alex Karp described the quarter as "otherworldly," as U.S. commercial revenue rose 149% from a year ago.
Caterpillar added 6.7% after the industrial machinery maker smashed Wall Street's second-quarter earnings estimates.
Merck rose 1.5%. The company topped analysts' second-quarter targets across its top and bottom lines even as dealmaking costs from a recent acquisition weighed on results. Merck's quarterly beat was driven by the continued adoption of Keytruda, the company's blockbuster cancer treatment.
Pfizer advanced 1.9% after the drugmaker lifted the bottom end of its full-year revenue guidance, citing growth in its non-Covid pharmaceutical portfolio. The company's second-quarter results also came in above Wall Street's expectations.
Moderna gained 4.4%. The drugmaker said it had vaccinated the first participants in an early-stage clinical trial evaluating the safety of its ebola vaccine candidate, mRNA-1469. Moderna's vaccine targets Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV). The update comes as a BDBV outbreak spreads through the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Wayfair soared 31% after the furniture retailer reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, with sequential revenue growth at its best level since 2020.
Zebra Technologies advanced 23%. The automation technology provider's second-quarter numbers handily beat Wall Street expectations. For the full year, Zebra expects sales growth of about 15%, up from prior guidance of 12%.
Fellow automation technology provider Rockwell Automation declined 7.8% even as the company reported better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter earnings and raised its full-year guidance.
Aptiv sank 17% and was the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500. The provider of software and hardware for automotive safety and self-driving applications reported better-than-expected second-quarter profit but guidance was a problem with Wall Street wanting more from both the third quarter and the full year view.
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