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Another record high for stocks as tech heavyweights put market on their shoulders

All of the gains on Monday are attributable to Nvidia and Apple.

9/22/25 3:51PM

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 set fresh record closing highs to kick off the week, up 0.4% and 0.5%, respectively, while the Russell 2000 outperformed with a 0.6% advance.

While indexes are making new highs, breadth is not. Over the past 15 trading days, the S&P 500 has moved higher despite more of its constituents falling than rising on seven occasions, including today. That’s tied for the highest frequency of the US benchmark index and its components diverging over a three-week span on record, based on data going back through 1997.

Tech and utilities were the only two S&P 500 sector ETFs to go positive on the day. Consumer staples was far and away the worst performer.

Gains on the day were led by Teradyne, which jumped nearly 13% after the semiconductor test equipment maker got a price target hike from Susquehanna to $200 from $133. Declines were led by Kenvue, which fell 7.5% following reports that President Donald Trump would soon announce a link between prenatal use of Tylenol and autism. Elsewhere…

Nvidia surged nearly 4% as the company said it would invest as much as $100 billion into OpenAI as part of an unprecedented data center buildout.

Apple was up more than 4% after Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives raised his price target on the tech giant to $310 from $270 thanks to “early strong demand signs” for the iPhone 17.

Of the 46 basis points in total return for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Monday, Nvidia and Apple contributed 58 basis points, as most other components went down.

Oracle leapt over 6% after the hyperscaler announced that its CEO for the past 11 years, Safra Catz, is stepping down and being replaced by two new co-CEOs.

Snap soared 4.3% as the stock receives a lot of positive attention from the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.

Oklo jumped almost 4% after Ives boosted his price target on the stock to a whopping $150 from $80 on Sunday.

Pfizer ended virtually flat after the vaccine maker announced that it would acquire anti-obesity drug developer Metsera. Metsera soared over 60% on the news.

Moderna rose more than 5% after a federal vaccine panel adopted a recommendation for the COVID-19 vaccine that was better than investors were pricing in.

Fox rose after Trump said that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the chief executive of Fox, are “probably” going to be involved in the investor group looking to buy TikTok in the US.

Shares of Better Home & Finance spiked nearly 47% after EMJ Capital founder Eric Jackson posted on X, dubbing the online mortgage lender the “Shopify of mortgages.”

BYD was marginally positive even as Berkshire Hathaway fully exited its stake in the world’s largest EV maker, according to a CNBC report over the weekend.

Tasha Matsumoto

13h

Stocks rise for the third-consecutive session, erasing December losses

Santa baby, just slip a rally under the tree...

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips17h

‘Golden age of profit margins’ seen in 2026

Wall Street tends to be a pretty optimistic place. But on one measure, market watchers are the most optimistic on record.

FactSet data shows the consensus estimate for S&P 500 net profit margins in calendar year 2026 calls for the gauge to climb to 13.9% in 2026.

But if borne out by events next year “it will mark the highest (annual) net profit margin reported by the index since FactSet began tracking this metric in 2008,” wrote John Butters, senior earnings analyst at the financial data company.

A recent story from Barron’s also commented on the expectations for especially fat profit margins embedded into forecasts for next year.

“We are in the golden age of margins,” RBC’s Capital Markets’ head of US equity strategy, Lori Calvasina, told the magazine.

That’s good news for investors looking forward to next year. But the follow up question, of course, is where the growth in profitability is expected to come from. The answer, as you might have guessed, is tech. Though the precise mechanisms by which those profits land in the coffers of the giant tech firms remains something of a mystery. Barron’s doesn’t get into the details, saying “call it benefits from AI, pricing power, or whatever.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like money in the bank. But even die-hard haters of AI have to acknowledge that betting against the ability of giant tech companies to generate massive profit growth has been a bad trade for the last couple decades.

The Stock Market Needs to Focus on Lucky 13

A recent story from Barron’s also commented on the expectations for especially fat profit margins embedded into forecasts for next year.

“We are in the golden age of margins,” RBC’s Capital Markets’ head of US equity strategy, Lori Calvasina, told the magazine.

Luke Kawa18h

Opendoor rises after CEO Kaz Nejatian touts an explosion in its home-buying footprint

Opendoor Technologies gained in early trading after CEO Kaz Nejatian touted an explosion in the company’s home-buying footprint.

In a message on X, the former Shopify COO posted two maps: one of which depicts a fairly limited area in which the online real estate company would buy or sell homes, and the second of which suggests that has now expanded to include the entire lower 48:

Big launch week at @Opendoor.

ZIP codes where @Opendoor buys homes. pic.twitter.com/UplMd4sXJE
— Kaz Nejatian (@CanadaKaz) December 22, 2025

In a follow-up tweet, Nejatian attributed the gains to AI, writing, “First pic took 10 *years* of work without AI. Second pic took 10 *weeks* of work with AI.”

On his first earnings call as CEO, Nejatian said the company had adopted a “default to AI approach.”

One of his first pledges was to launch Opendoor everywhere in the lower 48.

Max Knoblauch18h

Hertz surges on bullish options activity

As millions begrudgingly make their way to the rental car counter amid the winter holidays, investors are pouring into calls and sending Hertz stock soaring.

As of 10:51 a.m. eastern, Hertz had seen 17,861 calls traded. That’s already significantly ahead of the 20-day average volume of 12,956. Hertz shares are up more than 12%.

Seemingly juicing the rally was a post on X that read “car rental companies could end up being the picks and shovels of autonomy” that was reposted by billionaire Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund is one of Hertz’s largest shareholders.

If Hertz’s price action holds, the move will mark its ninth-best trading day of 2025.

Luke Kawa18h

POET Technologies jumps on elevated call activity

Optical communications company POET Technologies is up double digits in early trading on Monday as this potential supporting player in the AI boom gets a bid from the options market.

Just an hour after the opening bell sounded, call volumes are already running well above their five-session average for a full day.

The stock became a retail favorite in early Q4 right before many speculative trades began to retreat, with record call volumes of nearly 600,000 on October 7. The last big bump in options activity came on December 3, the session after Marvell’s acquisition of Celestial AI, a customer of POET, offered some validation for its technology as a data center solution.