US stocks leap toward a record as profits keep piling up and oil prices ease
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 4 hours, 16 minutes AGO
EW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is rallying toward a record on Tuesday as companies keep piling up profits and oil prices ease.
The S&P 500 climbed 1.5% and is on track to top its all-time high set a couple months ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 893 points, or 1.7%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% higher, as of noon Eastern time.
Despite worries about high inflation, the war in Iran and a possible bubble in stock prices because of euphoria around the boom in artificial-intelligence technology, Wall Street is nearing its latest apex in large part because profits are soaring for companies. That’s key because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate earnings over the long term.
Palantir Technologies helped lead the way and jumped 26.8% after CEO Alex Karp said its overall revenue leaped 93% in what he called an “otherworldly” quarter. Besides reporting a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected, the AI company also raised its revenue forecast for the full year of 2026.
Caterpillar climbed 5.8% after the heavy-equipment maker likewise reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected. It was the first time Caterpillar made more than $20 billion in sales and revenue in a quarter, and CEO Joe Creed said it’s seeing strong order rates and a growing backlog across its main businesses.
Caterpillar is also benefiting from the AI boom through increased orders for turbines used to power data centers, among other things.
McDonald's added 1.2% after topping analysts' expectations for profit during the spring, even as its customers faced increased pressure from expensive gasoline and worries about the economy.
They’re the latest companies to deliver even better profits for the latest quarter than investors expected, following strong results from Amazon, Microsoft and others. Coming into this week, companies in the S&P 500 index were on track to deliver growth of nearly 50% in earnings per share for the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet.