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The three major stock market indexes closed Monday at new all-time highs, as Wall Street rallied over economic growth prospects and prepared for a tumultuous week ahead, which will include significant bank earnings releases on Tuesday and critical inflation data.

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, traders and financial experts work.
courtesy of Getty Images

The Dow, which is made up of 30 historic companies like Disney and Goldman Sachs, rose 126 points, or 0.4 percent, to 34,996 on Monday, extending its year-to-date gains to roughly 16 percent.

The S&P 500 gained 0.4 percent to 4,385 points, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.2 percent; they’re now up 18.5 percent and 16 percent, respectively, this year.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan were among the stocks leading the S&P 500 gains this week, jumping 3%, 2.5 percent, and 2%, respectively, ahead of their quarterly reports.

In the meantime, Disney’s shares beat the Dow, rising more than 4% after the company’s spy thriller Black Widow smashed a box office record with $80 million in theaters and $60 million in streaming earnings over the weekend.

Whether or not corporate earnings maintain their momentum from the first quarter. In a Monday note, LPL Financial stated, “We ran out of superlatives to describe corporate America’s astounding performance during first-quarter earnings season,” highlighting profits that exceeded high expectations by one of the largest margins in history. The business anticipates “further good news this quarter as more of the economy has opened up,” but also notes that the second quarter “will almost definitely end up being the cycle’s high in profits growth.”
The monthly consumer price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also scheduled for Tuesday morning, in addition to the avalanche of corporate profits. Inflation, which has risen to 13-year highs during the pandemic, is expected to rise 0.5 percent in June after rising 0.6 percent in May, according to economists.
Energy and banking companies led the market higher at the start of this year, buoyed by optimism about the receding pandemic, but technology stocks have also recovered after underperforming this spring with the fear of rising interest rates. These anxieties prompted a stock market shift away from growth companies (such as those in the technology sector) and into cyclical and value-oriented segments of the market, which underperformed during the pandemic (like energy and financials). In recent weeks, however, Federal Reserve officials have allayed fears about interest rates by stating unequivocally that the Fed will not be raising rates anytime soon.
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