Wall St ends higher, boosted by tech gains, US-Iran peace hopes

STORY: U.S. stocks posted modest gains on Monday, with the Dow nudging up slightly, the S&P 500 adding about a quarter of a percent and the Nasdaq gaining just over four-tenths of a percent.Tech shares rose 2.5%, boosting the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 to the latest in a series of record closing highs.:: ArchiveAmong the stocks lifting the sector was Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which rose 9% ahead of the release of its quarterly earnings. After the close, shares jumped another 35% when HPE posted record second-quarter results, prompting the company to accelerate its long-term financial goals by two years as expansion of AI data centers boosts demand for its servers and networking products.Brad Long, chief investment officer at Wealthspire, said it's that kind of blockbuster earnings report that continues to power the market higher."If we look at S&P right now, on track for about 20% earnings growth - that's an incredible rate mid-cycle here. And so the markets have really been somewhat melting up, and they've been doing that on fundamentals. Now that's helped them look through the volatility in the Middle East. It's helped them look through an economy that's growing and robust, but maybe not exactly where you would want it to see this level of markets and making new highs. But it's really a story about the fundamentals.":: ArchiveAmong other movers, shares of Nvidia rose more than 6% after the company unveiled a new chip that puts AI capabilities directly into personal computers. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chip is the result of a three-year partnership with Microsoft to, quote, "reinvent the PC" for the AI era. Shares of Microsoft added more than 2%.Other semiconductor stocks were mixed. Qualcomm tumbled nearly 9% and Intel fell more than 4.5%. But Micron rose about 6.5% and breached the $1,000 mark for the first time.:: ServiceNowAnd software stocks rebounded from a heavy sell-off earlier this year on AI disruption fears. ServiceNow climbed more than 9%, while IBM gained about 7.5%.