Market Recap: Monday, August 3

The markets closed in the green after Monday’s trading session with the Nasdaq closing at a record high as the big tech stocks extended their gains from last week. The Final Round panel discusses the latest.

Video Transcript

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SEANA SMITH: We have stocks closing out the first trading day of August with gains. All three major averages closing to the upside. Welcome back to "The Final Round." I'm Seana Smith.

Taking a look at the performance today, the Dow closing up just around 240 points, not too far off the highs of the day. S&P up just around 7/10 of a percent. And the NASDAQ closing at a record, up around 1.4%. The NASDAQ was the outperformer. It was the story for the entire trading day.

You saw the outperformance in a lot of the big tech names. Microsoft the leader there along with Apple. We had Apple shares rising today inching closer and closer to that $2 trillion market cap. That, of course, will be something to watch for the remainder of the trading week. But digging into the Dow, the other outperformer there, besides Microsoft and Apple, we also had Boeing posting gains up just around 2%.

Taking a look at some of the sector action today aside from technology, health care and industrials, those two sectors leading the way. The underperformers today were utilities and real estate.

A couple of factors driving the market-- we had the results from the Eli Lilly starting a phase-three trial of its coronavirus antibody treatment. That helped to boost investor sentiment out of the gate.

And then the econ side of things, we got that better-than-expected manufacturing data out this morning. And then, of course, earnings, that has been the big story now over the past two weeks or so. At this point, 84% of the companies that have reported so far have beaten expectations. We have a number of companies set to report over the next five days. So that, of course, could be a big driver in the market this week.