Dow closes 500 points higher as Apple revives stock rally

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

The three leading U.S. indexes finished Monday’s session solidly in the green.

The S&P 500 rose 1.07% to end the day at 6,735.13, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.37% to reach 22,990.54. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 515.97 points, or 1.12%, to close at 46,706.58.

— Sean Conlon

Consumer staples stocks sat out of Monday’s market rally.

The S&P 500 sector slipped 0.2%, making it the only one of the 11 groups that comprise the broad index on pace to end in the red. By comparison, the benchmark as a whole was on track to finish the day more than 1% higher.

Molson Coors, Walmart and Hershey led the consumer staples down with declines of around 1% each. On the other hand, Estee Lauder and Dollar Tree helped mitigate losses as each gained more than 2%.

— Alex Harring

With all of the spending around artificial intelligence and the market’s rally this year, Canaccord Genuity said the pressure is on for Big Tech companies heading into earnings.

“With this much market value added in such a short amount of time, the bar may be high for tech bellwether earnings reports this quarter,” analyst Michael Graham wrote to clients in a Monday note.

Graham pointed to OpenAI’s recent deals in particular as a reason why traders will be closely following these reports.

His comments come as the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tracks to end the year more than 18% higher, making it the best-performing of the three major indexes.

“Many investors are concerned about how much ‘dead air’ might be underneath the market at current levels,” Graham said. “They likely have a point.”

— Alex Harring

Apple’s five-year contract with F1 for exclusive streaming rights could mean short-term pain but lead to long-term gains, according to Morgan Stanley.

The bank reiterated its overweight rating for F1 and its price target of $110.00. This suggests an 11% raise from Friday’s close.

ESPN had exclusive streaming rights to F1. Morgan Stanley estimated the sports platform reaches around 65 million households in comparison to Apple’s 20 to 30 million subscribers.

“It will be challenging, in our view, for F1 to avoid a viewership drop moving from ESPN to Apple TV — at least initially,” Morgan Stanley said in its analysis. Despite uncertainties around F1’s audience looking forward, the bank believes the racing company will not immediately feel revenue impact. “Losing ESPN as a partner is a risk to any sport’s visibility in the US. Apple, however, brings unique opportunities to F1 as a global consumer tech platform.”

— Itzel Franco

Shares of Alibaba jumped more than 4% on Monday after a report over the weekend said a new system from the Chinese tech giant led to an 82% reduction in the number of Nvidia GPUs it needed for its AI models.

The South China Morning Post reported that Alibaba’s cloud pooling system, called Aegaeon, was tested in Alibaba Cloud’s model marketplace for more than three months. During this time, Alibaba significantly lowered the number of Nvidia H20 chips used for dozens of AI models, according to a research paper presented this week in South Korea.

“Aegaeon is the first work to reveal the excessive costs associated with serving concurrent LLM workloads on the market,” researchers from Peking University and Alibaba Cloud wrote in the paper, according to the report.

By having several large language models share the same AI hardware, Alibaba’s new system could lead to a reduction in new GPU purchases. The news comes as U.S. hyperscalers continue to beef up their spending plans on data centers and AI technologies.

Alibaba shares have soared about 105% year to date. Nvidia shares are up about 36.8% this year.

— Pia Singh

• Apple— The Tim Cook-led company climbed 4% afterthe iPhone 17 series outsold the iPhone 16 seriesin China and the U.S. in the first 10 days of availability, according to Counterpoint research, and Loop Capital upgraded the stock to buy from hold, citing better-than-expected iPhone demand.
• KLA Corp.— The semiconductor equipment maker added 4% after Barclays upgraded it to overweight from equal weight, saying it’s “positive on the long-term outlook for increased process control intensity and its exposure to Leading Edge where we expect strong growth looking ahead, and a relatively low bar for revenue growth ex-China.”
• Cleveland-Cliffs— The steelmaker soared 24% after it said it’sexploring expanding into rare earths mining.”We are working with the geologists to assess whether these deposits could become commercially viable,” CEO Lourenco Goncalves said. Cleveland’s third-quarter results topped expectations, with adjusted EBITDA reaching $143 million against a FactSet consensus estimate of $127.9 million, and it said capital spending would be less than its prior forecast.

Read the full list of stocks here.

— Scott Schnipper

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he thinks he’s going to achieve a “fair” trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“We’re going to have a fair deal,” the president said alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House. “I want to be good to China. I love my relationship with President Xi. We have a great relationship.”

Trump also said that he plans to visit China “sometime really early next year.”

— Sean Conlon

On Monday, 12 stocks in the S&P 500 traded at new all-time highs.

Tickers that hit this milestone included:

• Alphabet C sharetrading at all-time highs back to the special distribution on April 2, 2014, when (the non-voting share was created, and it began trading on April 3, 2014)
• Alphabet A sharetrading all-time highs back to its IPO on Aug. 19, 2004
• Monster Beverage (formerly Hansen Natural)trading at all-time high levels back to its listing on the NASDAQ in 1992
• Cencoratrading at all-time highs back to its IPO in April 1995
• Quest Diagnostics trading at all-time high levels back to its spin-off from Corning in 1996
• EMCOR Grouptrading at all-time highs back to its establishment after the reorganization of Jamaica Water Supply following its emergence from bankruptcy in 1995
• Apple Inc.trading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in December 1980
• Advanced Micro Devicestrading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in September 1972
• KLA Corporationtrading at all-time highs, back to KLA Instruments’ IPO in in 1980
• Micron trading at all-time highs back to IPO in June 1984
• TE Connectivity trading at all-time highs back to its IPO in 2007
• Ameren Corporation trading at all-time high levels back through our history to 1972

The four stocks that traded at new 52-week lows included Charter Communications, CarMax, Brown & Brown and Weyerhaeuser.

— Christopher Hayes, Lisa Kailai Han

Bank of America sees Alphabet building on its already strong year-to-date performance.

The bank increased its price objective to $280 from $252. BofA’s new target implies over an 11% gain from Friday’s close.

As OpenAI continues to partner with retailers to integrate browsing and checkout features into ChatGPT, the bank is optimistic about Google’s stable paid click growth. “Despite ChatGPT’s rapid growth, Google Search traffic and monetization appear to remain healthy, suggesting that Gen-AI usage and market opportunity is largely incremental,” BofA said in a note.

Shares were up 1% following the price target raise. The stock has been on fire this year, up more than 35%.

— Itzel Franco

Monday’s market rally took place without the participation of high-flying Oracle shares.

The software stock tumbled more than 3% in late morning trading. Despite that, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both rose by at least 1%.

Oracle vs. S&P 500, 1-day

Oracle’s Monday slide pulled the stock below its flatline for the month. Still, the stock has surged more than 60% in 2025 amid excitement around its role in a TikTok deal and its position as a beneficiary of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom.

— Alex Harring

Citi moved to the sidelines on Gildan, citing recent outperformance.

Analyst Paul Lejuez downgraded the clothing maker to neutral from buy. But Lejuez raised his price target by $3 to $63, which implies 3.7% upside over last week’s closing level.

Lejuez noted that the stock has surged around 30% this year and 20% since its deal to acquire Hainesbrands came together.

“We believe the market is now pricing in a successful close to the deal, seamless integration, and synergies that are at least as much as what [management] indicated,” Lejuez wrote in a Monday note to clients.

Gildan’s U.S.-listed shares bucked the market uptrend on Monday with a 0.7% slide.

— Alex Harring

Evercore ISI added Apple to its tactical outperform list, seeing a strong earnings report ahead.

“We believe AAPL is well positioned to report upside to upside to current Sep-qtr consensus expectations and could guide to upside for the Dec-qtr,” the firm said in a note to clients. “Our positive bias is driven by iPhone data points that suggest this may be more than the average iPhone refresh cycle, as lead times for the base iPhone 17 are above last year’s October levels.”

The Wall Street firm left its price target of $290 unchanged. The forecast represents a 15% upside from Friday’s close of $252.29.

— Yun Li

Cleveland-Cliffs shares surged 16% in morning trading on Monday following the steel producer’s latest quarterly results.

For the third quarter, the company posted adjusted EBITDA of $143 million, above the $127.9 million that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

CEO Lourenco Goncalves cited President Donald Trump’s trade policy as a catalyst for demand recovery for automotive-grade steel that’s made in the U.S. Trump had announced a 50% tariff on steel imports earlier this year.

“As a result of this new trade environment, we have won new and growing supply arrangements with all major automotive [original equipment manufacturers], locking in multi-year agreements that reflect the reliability of our well-established supply chains anchored by our nine galvanizing plants dedicated to automotive-grade steels, with five of these plants specialized in exposed parts,” the chief executive said in a statement.

Goncalves also said that it’s going to explore expanding its role in rare earths production amid their “renewed importance.” Rare earth stocks traded higher during Monday’s session.

“Beyond steelmaking, the renewed importance of rare earths has driven us to re-focus on this potential opportunity at our upstream mining assets,” he also said. “It is our obligation to do so as a company with our geological footprint. We have looked at all of our ore bodies and tailings basins, and two sites in particular, one in Michigan and one in Minnesota, show the most potential.”

CLF, 1-day

Stocks surged into the green on Monday morning.

The S&P 500 rose about 0.7% just after 9:30 a.m. ET, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also moved higher by 238 points, or 0.5%.

— Sean Conlon

Some stocks are making big moves in premarket trading on Monday:

• Cleveland-Cliffs— Shares jumped 10.5% as the steel company posted its third-quarter results. Cleveland-Cliffs reported adjusted EBITDA of $143 million, topping a FactSet estimate of $127.9 million. The company also issued capital expenditures guidance of around $525 million for the year, less than a prior forecast of $600 million.
• Rare earths — The group is trading higher afterBloomberg News reportedthat Australia’s prime minister plans to offer his nation’s resource holdings to the President Donald Trump after China’s move to limit its exports to the U.S. Shares ofUnited States Antimonyjumped nearly 15%, whileCritical MetalsandUSA Rare Earthrose 9% and 6%, respectively.
• Liberty Energy— Shares jumped 5.6%, adding to Friday’s rally of more than 28%. While the energy services company missed expectations for third-quarter revenue from analysts polled by FactSet, investors appeared pleased with upbeat sales commentary.

Read here for the full list.

— Liz Napolitano

TD Cowen is moving off the sidelines when it comes toAlly Financial.

Analyst Moshe Orenbuch upgraded the stock to buy from hold. Orenbuch also raised his price target to $50 per share from $43. His revised forecast implies that the stock could climb another 26% from here.

Shares of Ally Financial have added 11% this year, making the company’s valuation look “compelling” here, Orenbuch noted. The change comes after Ally reported third-quarter results that beat the Street. CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

ALLY, 1-day

Shares of Hologic jumped 5% in premarket trading Monday after Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported last week that Blackstone and TPG are nearing a deal to acquire the medical technology company for more than $17 billion, including debt.

The people said that the parties are discussing a price of above $75 per share and that a deal could be announced within days.

HOLX, 1-day

U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled a shift in support toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin as he looks for a quick end to the war in Ukraine, likely striking fear into Ukrainian officials.

Trump held a tense meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday, with the potential supply of U.S. long-range cruise missiles, Tomahawks, on the agenda.

Zelenskyy walked away from the meeting not only empty-handed, but apparently upbraided by Trump, who said Ukraine should accept Russia’s terms for ending the war — by handing over the entire eastern territory of Donbas, the epicenter of ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters this weekend, Trump said for Donbas to be “cut the way it is.”

“It’s cut up right now, I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia,” he said on Air Force One on Sunday. “They should stop right now at the battle lines … Go home, stop killing people and be done.” Read more.

— Holly Ellyatt

Third-quarter earning reports are ramping up this week.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to grow by 8.4% compared with the same quarter a year ago, according to FactSet. FactSet senior analyst John Butters said it is likely the broad-market index will report earnings growth above 13% for the fourth straight quarter, however.

Check out the biggest names expected to report earnings this week:

• Monday: W.R. Berkley Corporation, Steel Dynamics
• Tuesday: Netflix, GE Aerospace, Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International, RTX, Texas Instruments, Danaher, Capital One
• Wednesday: Tesla, SAP, International Business Machines, Thermo Fisher Scientific, AT&T, Lam Research, GE Vernova, Amphenol
• Thursday: T-Mobile, Intel, Union Pacific, Honeywell, Blackstone, Newmont, Norfolk Southern
• Friday: Procter & Gamble, Sanofi, HCA Healthcare, General Dynamics

— Pia Singh