S&P 500 flirts with record high; chipmakers and small caps jump
Affected assets and topics
Why it matters
The S&P 500 is nearing a record high, driven by gains in chipmakers and small caps, indicating a broadening market trend. This trend is expected to continue due to a resilient economy and market. Palantir Technologies and SanDisk led the gains among Big Tech companies.
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Expected market reaction
Market impact analysis based on bullish sentiment with 90% confidence.
Evidence trail
Evidence
AI provenance
Technical identifiers
- Provider tag
- groq-llama-3.1-8b-instant
- Analysis version
- groq-llama-3.1-8b-instant
- Article id
- 40622
Original source
STORY: U.S. stocks closed higher on Monday, with the Dow gaining one percent and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each adding more than half a percent.While the indexes were lifted by gains in chipmakers, small caps also performed well, with the Russell 2000 jumping about 1%.The small-cap index has significantly outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq so far in 2026.The broadening of the market is a trend that's likely to continue, said Jason Browne, president of Alexis Investment Partners."Everybody knows a lot of the AI trades have done well. Everybody knows gold did really well last year and into this year. And so just a natural thing that happens when people decide they want to broaden out and try other things, sometimes those become sources of liquidity - things that people sell - most especially when you have the down days like Friday, but also sometimes even into the follow-through up day, simply because everybody's owned those. And so they start trying to buy other things instead. And I think we're seeing a healthy amount of that taking place in the spirit of a pretty resilient economy, in the spirit of a pretty resilient market overall."Among those Big Tech gainers, Palantir Technologies jumped more than 7% in extended trading after the data analytics company said it anticipates a big jump in sales this year, in part due to government contracts.Chipmakers benefiting from AI-related demand for their components also rallied.SanDisk surged nearly 15.5%, extending gains from last week, when the data storage firm predicted profits and sales above Wall Street estimates.Meanwhile, shares of Advanced Micro Devices rose 4% and Micron Technology added 5.5%.And shares of Walt Disney tumbled almost 7.5%, despite posting quarterly earnings above Wall Street expectations, as it warned of a decline in international visitors to its U.S. theme parks and a slump in earnings at its TV and film division.
Read the full article on Yahoo Finance
Original article published by Yahoo Finance on February 3, 2026. Analysis and insights provided by AnalystMarkets AI.