US stocks climb on August dip activity

In the final days of a typically challenging August for the stock market, investors flocked back to tech stocks, driving the Nasdaq Composite Index up by more than 1% on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 258 points or 0.7% and the S&P 500 increased by 1.4%.

The tech-focused Nasdaq rose 1.8%. With a gain of more than 4%, chipmaker Nvidia led the march of advancing tech stocks. Shares of Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta Platforms were all trading higher. The industry appeared to benefit from declining bond yields when fresh US economic data was released.

After Citi upgraded the shares and stated that the telecom giant would be able to afford its hefty dividend, AT&T saw a 3.8% increase. In other news, Best Buy’s stock rose 5.6% after the company reported beating profits expectations. The consumer confidence data came in less than anticipated at 106.1, which caused the 2-year Treasury to decline by more than 16 basis points.

A reading of 116 was predicted by economists surveyed by Dow Jones. Another indication of a slowing economy was a decrease in open listings in July, according to the most recent study on job openings and labour turnover.

In a report published on Tuesday, Max Kettner, chief multi-asset strategist at HSBC, said, “We think this presents a pretty good tactical entry point into risk assets, particularly into US equities.” A court judgement that could open the door for a bitcoin ETF, which supported a 15% increase in cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, also encouraged risk-taking on Tuesday. After the company’s AI-driven surge so far this year, J.P. Morgan is eliminating Salesforce from its list of top investment choices.

Although the company continues to see valuation upside, it believes that the stock may be negatively impacted in the near future by the company’s outperformance and other weak measures. On Tuesday afternoon, the price of the stock is barely over flat. After Raymond James changed his stance to one of optimism, NextEra fell, and analyst Pavel Molchanov upgraded NEP from Market Perform to Outperform.

The stock currently yields 7%, which is 290 basis points higher than the 10-year Treasury and 290 basis points higher than the long-term median yield of 170 basis points. Leqembi, the company’s Alzheimer’s medication, has earned positive sentiment from RBC Capital Markets, with analyst Brian Abrahams upping his price objective for Biogen by $3 to $357 on Tuesday. Leqembi is anticipated to generate $1.4 billion in sales in 2026 and $10.4 billion in end-user revenues by 2032, according to the company.