STORY: U.S. stocks closed higher on Monday as investors looked ahead to this week’s megacap earnings and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting.
The Dow gained six-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 added more than seven-tenths and the Nasdaq climbed more than 1%.
The S&P 500 notched its sixth record closing high of the year. The bellwether index is up 3.3% so far in 2024.
The Fed’s two-day policy meeting concludes on Wednesday. Investors will be looking for more clues on the timing of the central bank’s first rate cut.
Chris Carey is Portfolio Manager at Carnegie Investment Counsel.
“There are some analysts out there that do think that we’re not going to see a single rate cut this year. I even saw an opinion that we might see a rate hike. I’m in the optimistic camp that the growth in the US economy has been stellar, especially compared to the rest of the world. I think that we’ll see maybe one or two cuts at the very least, but there’s still a lot to be determined, a lot of data for the Fed to pass over.”
Three key reports on the state of the labor market will be released this week, as will a spate of earnings reports from high profile tech companies.
Shares of Meta Platforms – which reports results Thursday – rose more than 1.5% after brokerage firm Jefferies raised its target price on the stock to $455 from $425.
Tesla shares surged more than 4% after the electric car maker revealed capex plans.
And shares of Robot vacuum maker iRobot slid nearly 9% as the company and Amazon scrapped merger plans in the face of opposition from EU antitrust regulators.
