The closing bell told a tidier story than the day that produced it. When trading ended Monday, the Nasdaq 100 had climbed 1.17% to 29,529.35 — snapping five straight declines — and the Nasdaq Composite had added 1.11% to close at 26,430.89. The S&P 500 rose 0.41% to 7,690.73 and the small-cap Russell 2000 edged up 0.25% to 2,728.30. Only the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished in the red, slipping 0.07% to 51,966.03 for its second straight daily fall.
This was a rebound, but it was a narrow one, and it is worth being precise about that. Only four of the S&P 500’s eleven sectors finished higher. Consumer discretionary led the board with a 2.73% gain, technology added 1.19% for its first gain after three declines, communication services rose 0.28% and materials inched up 0.08% for a third straight gain. On the other side, utilities fell 1.97% — the day’s deepest sector drop — real estate lost 1.17% and financials shed 0.79%. At one point during the session, roughly 70% of S&P 500 constituents were trading lower. The indexes rose because the biggest technology names rose, not because the whole market did.
It also had a hangover to work off. Last week was the market’s worst in months: the Nasdaq snapped a four-week winning streak and tumbled 4.5% across the five sessions, the S&P 500 closed 2% lower for its fourth negative week in six, and even the Dow’s 0.7% advance — its second straight weekly gain — could not disguise how concentrated the damage in technology had been. Monday did not erase that week. It was, however, the first session in six in which the Nasdaq 100’s closing number moved in the other direction.
Memory Chips Did the Heavy Lifting
The engine of the day was the same trade that had been punished all last week: artificial intelligence and the memory chips that feed it. In midday trading, The Motley Fool reported Sandisk soaring 7.4% and Micron Technology gaining 4.7% as sentiment in memory stocks shifted, pulling the broader semiconductor complex higher with them. Intel climbed after JPMorgan upgraded the stock — a move Previously covered as it happened in the morning’s Intel upgrade story. Amazon pushed upward after Morgan Stanley raised its price target and named the stock a top pick, finishing the day up about 5%. Tesla gained ground ahead of its earnings report later this week, and Nvidia recovered ground after ending Friday lower.
Context matters here, because Monday’s bounce came off a genuinely ugly Friday. Zacks’ recap of Friday’s session had the Dow down 0.3% to 52,002.41, the Nasdaq Composite down 2.1% to 26,140.03 and the S&P 500 down 1.1% to 7,659.44, with the VIX spiking more than 21% to 19.99 and oil jumping — WTI crude rose 2.6% to $99.02 a barrel and Brent added 3.72% to $109.86. Against that backdrop, Monday’s fear gauge told the calmer story: the VIX closed 7.75% lower at 18.44, back below the 20 level that tends to make traders twitchy.
Bonds Were Not in a Calming Mood
The bond market, however, was selling off while equities rallied. The ten-year Treasury yield rose six basis points to 5.15%, the two-year added three basis points to 4.77%, the thirty-year rose five to 5.48%, and the gap between the two- and ten-year yields widened to 38 basis points. The selling mirrored Europe’s, where France’s ten-year borrowing costs surged after a weekend of violent protests over living costs and public services — unrest that also weighed on French stocks and that AJ Bell’s Danni Hewson, in commentary carried in the day’s market wrap, said markets could not simply shrug off. Rate-sensitive corners of the U.S. market felt it directly: homebuilder confidence has fallen to a 14-year low, and real estate and utilities — the classic yield-sensitive sectors — brought up the rear of the S&P 500 all day. For the France side of the story, see Previously’s coverage of the curfew crisis.
So what does Monday actually settle? Less than the green on the screen suggests, and the calendar knows it. This is an earnings week with real information in it: Meta Platforms and Tesla both report Wednesday, and The Motley Fool notes investors will also be watching SpaceX’s results for signs of strength or weakness in the AI and technology complex. The questions that drove last week’s sell-off — how much is being spent on AI infrastructure, how it is being financed, and when it pays back — were not answered by one good Monday. They were postponed.
Still, give the day its due. A market that had watched the Nasdaq 100 fall five sessions in a row found buyers exactly where the selling had been heaviest, the volatility index stepped back from the edge, and the dip-buyers who stepped in on memory names were rewarded by the close. Whether that was the start of a repair or just a pause in the argument is the question the rest of the week — and Wednesday’s earnings in particular — gets to answer. For the intraday picture, see Previously’s midday markets wrap.
