US close: Stocks end session higher ahead of Q2 earnings
Wall Street stocks closed higher on Monday, extending gains seen in the previous session to push major indices to fresh record highs.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.36% at 34,996.18, while the S&P 500 was 0.35% firmer at 4,384.63 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.21% stronger at 14,733.24.
The Dow closed 126.02 points higher on Monday, with reopening plays Carnival Corp and General Electric in the red, while big tech stocks like Tesla, Nvidia and Facebook closed in the green.
Virgin Galactic was down around 17% after founder Richard Branson made history by making his way into space aboard the company's VSS Unity spacecraft, while Walt Disney stock gained after Black Widow brought in $80.0m at the US domestic box office at its debut, the most of any Covid-19 era film.
Investors also had an eye locked on the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, currently sitting at around 1.36%.
While no major corporate earnings were released on Monday, the second-quarter earnings season will kick off tomorrow, with analysts expecting strong earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America throughout the week.
On the macro front, the New York Federal Reserve Bank's June survey of consumer expectations showed that median inflation expectations over the next 12 months jumped to 4.8% - a 0.8 percentage point increase to the highest in series history.