By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 and Dow closed at record highs Monday, driven by a Tesla-powered rally in consumer discretionary, and gains in energy ahead of quarterly earnings from big tech.  

Closed record high at 4,566.92 was reached by the index, which rose 0.4%. To close the day, the Nasdaq rose 0.9% and the Dow gained 64 points, or 0.19%.

Tesla (NASDAQ) rose more than 12 percent to record levels and reached $1 trillion market capital. Hertz, a car rental agency ordered 100,000 Tesla cars for its fleet. Wall Street gave Tesla an additional boost following Morgan Stanley’s increase to its $1,200 target, from $900. The reason was higher volume expectations.

Last week’s gains in energy were augmented by oil prices rising to seven-year records. This was due to expectations that global oil supplies may remain more tight than they have been for some time, as many major oil producers seem reluctant to boost their output.

Saudi minister of energy prince Abdulaziz bin Salman declared over the weekend, that OPEC+ should continue its cautious approach in raising output due to an increase in Covid-19 cases worldwide. This poses a threat to global demand.

APA Corporation (NASDAQ:), EOG Resources (NYSE:), and Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:),  led the gains for energy, with the latter closing up more than 3%

Material also contributed to the market’s rise higher powered by Albemarle (NYSE:), and Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold (NYSE:) underpinned by rising commodity prices.

Tech is poised for a major week, as large tech companies report earnings.   

With a strong bottom line and a missed top line, Facebook (NASDAQ) launched its earnings for big technology. The social media company also flagged slowing revenue growth for the current quarter following Apple’s private changes  to its mobile operating system iOS.

Google’s parent Alphabet, Twitter, and Microsoft will announce earnings Tuesday. Apple (NASDAQ 🙂 and Amazon I (NASDAQ 🙂 will report their earnings on Thursday.

“[W]We believe that the guidance from tech stalwarts in 3Q will provide another catalyst for tech stocks. We expect tech stocks to grow into next year with our NASDAQ 16K target.” Wedbush stated in a note.

After PayPal (NASDAQ:) claimed that they are not currently seeking a deal to take over Pinterest, the stock fell 13%. Bloomberg News published last week that PayPal considered a bid of $45 million for Pinterest.

Kimberly-Clark, NYSE:), fell over 2% after reporting mixed quarter earnings. While earnings were disappointing, revenue beat Wall Street’s expectations. This was due to the impact of inflation and supply chain problems.

The third-quarter earnings season remains strong and is expected to be the most profitable on record.

“Of the 117 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 65% have exceeded consensus expectations by at least a standard deviation of analyst estimates, a rate that –if sustained –would rank among the strongest quarters on record behind 1Q and 2Q 2021,” Goldman Sachs (NYSE:) said in a recent note.