US Stocks Rise In Final Hour Of Wall Street Trading: Markets Wrap

With a jittery April near a close, several market pros see little reason to think volatility is in the rearview mirror. (Source: Bloomberg)

A late-day wave of dip buying erased losses in stocks, with Wall Street investors awaiting a slew of corporate earnings and economic data for insights on the impacts of President Donald Trump's tariff war.

As the S&P 500 closed higher for five consecutive sessions, the American equity benchmark posted its longest winning streak since November. Monday marked the fifth time in the past month the index fully wiped out an intraday gain or drop of 1% or more. The number of reversals already matches the total seen in the entire year of 2024.

Boeing Co. and International Business Machines Corp. led gains in blue chips. Nvidia Corp. sank on news Huawei Technologies Co. is set to test a new AI chip. Megacaps Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. will report results in coming days. Treasuries rose. The dollar fell.

From jobs to inflation and economic growth, traders will have a lot to digest this week. A measure of Texas manufacturing activity weakened significantly as executives used words like “chaos” and “insanity” to describe the tariff turmoil, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“This will be one of the busiest weeks of the year,” said Anthony Saglimbene at Ameriprise. “Ongoing trade headlines, an economic calendar filled with key releases and the peak week of the earnings season, including several Magnificent Seven companies reporting results, should keep investors' heads spinning.”

With a jittery April near a close, several market pros see little reason to think volatility is in the rearview mirror. For equities to keep rallying, investors would need to see the White House follow through on the “dovish pivot” toward trade with China, according to Chris Larkin at E*Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC the US has put China to the side for now as it seeks trade deals with between 15 to 17 other countries, while indicating it's up to Beijing to take the first step in de-escalating the tariff fight.

“Underneath the surface, key risks persist — trade tensions, recession worries, and monetary policy uncertainties are very much alive,” said Fawad Razaqzada at City Index and Forex.com.

While many executives have declined to predict how tariffs might impact their bottom lines, Wall Street has been doing its own math.

Based on a 22% tariff rate modeled by Bloomberg Economics, lower gross margins could result in a net income contraction of about 7% in 2025 for the S&P 500, compared with the current consensus estimate of nearly 12% growth, wrote Bloomberg Intelligence chief equity strategist Gina Martin Adams.

Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson says the weak dollar will support US corporate earnings, helping the American stock market to outperform the rest of the world.

Yet Wilson expects the S&P 500 to remain in the 5,000 to 5,500 range. A more substantial increase would require a tariff deal with China, clear rebound in earnings estimates and the possibility of easier monetary policy, he wrote.

Meantime, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s trading desk is turning tactically bullish on US equities, predicting that tailwinds including big-tech earnings and trade deal announcements will continue to lift stocks after the recent rout.

Still, the bank was quick to emphasize in a note to clients Monday that the rally's momentum could fade within weeks, with the negative impacts of US tariffs poised to begin dragging on the economy in the months ahead.

Corporate Highlights:

Chief executive officers from Nvidia Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Co., General Electric Co. and SoftBank Group Corp. are among corporate leaders slated to visit the White House on Wednesday as President Trump highlights the US investments they've announced in the first 100 days of his second term in office.
International Business Machines Corp. plans to invest $150 billion in the US over the next five years, joining a cohort of companies that have announced spending commitments following Trump's election and tariff threats.
Boeing Co.'s debt is no longer at immediate risk of being cut to junk status by S&P Global Ratings, a sign of progress in the planemaker's turnaround after a brutal year in 2024.
United Parcel Service Inc. is in talks with robotics startup Figure AI Inc. to use humanoid robots for some tasks in the logistics giant's network, according to people familiar with the matter.
NXP Semiconductors NV announced a new chief executive officer as part of its quarterly earnings report and warned that the chipmaker was navigating “a very uncertain environment” due to tariffs.
OpenAI now lets users shop for products within ChatGPT, the latest move by the artificial intelligence startup to expand the reach of its popular chatbot and challenge rivals like Google.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. took the wraps off a new version of its flagship Qwen AI model, sustaining the breakneck pace of development that's characterized China's artificial intelligence sphere in the wake of DeepSeek.
Mastercard Inc. announced that it will give merchants the option to receive payments in stablecoins amid increasing global regulatory clarity on the digital assets that are usually pegged to fiat currencies.
HG Vora Capital Management, an activist investor seeking changes at casino operator Penn Entertainment Inc., criticized the company for reducing the number of board seats up for election and said it will continue a proxy fight.