Wall Street Rallies Ahead of Reports From Big Tech

Wall Street ticked higher Monday to start a week full of updates on where interest rates and profits for the stock market's most influential companies are heading. The S&P 500 rose 18.30, or 0.4%, to 4,554.64, coming off its eighth winning week in the last 10. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 183.55, or 0.5%, at 35,411.24, and the Nasdaq composite added 26.06, or 0.2%, to 14,058.87. Traders expect the Federal Reserve on Wednesday to raise interest rates for perhaps the final time this cycle, the AP reports. Stocks have rallied hard this year on hopes the economy can continue to grow as inflation cools enough to get the Fed to not only stop hiking rates but to begin cutting them next year.

Medical technology company Becton Dickinson jumped 5.7% for the largest gain in the S&P 500 after it said its updated Alaris infusion system will return to full commercial operations following earlier recalls. It received a clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration for the system, which delivers medications and other products to patients. Chevron rallied 2% after it gave an early look at its results for the spring, reporting a stronger profit than analysts expected.

Roughly 30% of companies in the S&P 500 are scheduled to tell investors this week how they did from April through June. Key among them are three Big Tech behemoths that have grown so large that their stock movements often dictate where the S&P 500 goes. Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft will all report their results this week, and they're three of the seven stocks that accounted for the majority of the S&P 500's gain in the first half of the year. Each of the three has soared at least 35% for this year so far, and they'll need to deliver strong numbers to justify their big rallies. The market's top stocks have become so big and their movements so influential over the market that Nasdaq rebalanced its Nasdaq 100 index before trading began Monday, to lessen the impact some stocks have on the overall index.

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