Aberdeen Angus bull (Getty Images)

Two tech titans singlehandedly drag S&P 500 higher

Alphabet and Apple put the stock market on their broad, multitrillion-dollar shoulders.

9/3/25 3:58PM

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.8% while the Russell 2000 dipped 0.1% on Wednesday.

More than all of the daily returns in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF were attributable to just two companies: Alphabet and Apple.

Google was the day’s top performer, up 9.1% after the tech giant avoided some of the worst-case antitrust scenarios tied to its dominant position in search. The court decision helped Apple a ton, too: shares rose 3.8% after Bank of America boosted its price target, saying the company will keep pulling in about $20 billion a year from Google to preload its apps as the default setting on iPhones. Near the close, Bloomberg reported that Apple is developing an AI web search tool for the new Siri and reached an agreement with Google to test using its Gemini model to provide the underlying technology. Meanwhile, Dollar Tree led declines after the retailer handily beat Q2 expectations, but fresh sales guidance suggested weakening momentum in the second half of the year.

Macy’s shares soared 20.6% after the department store chain posted knockout Q2 results and raised its full-year guidance.

Hims & Hers spiked 7.2% after a judge dismissed a lawsuit from Eli Lilly against another rival telehealth firm selling knockoff versions of its GLP-1 drugs.

Campbell’s stock climbed 7.2% after the soup maker ladled out solid Q4 results as more cash-strapped consumers cooked at home, but warned that higher costs would weigh on margins.

Plug Power jumped in the premarket amid a surge of trading volume in the hydrogen fuel cell company before closing up 1.4%.

Oscar Health rose after it reiterated its annual guidance and offered positive commentary on cost trends at the Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference.

Oil names including ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, APA Corporation, Diamondback Energy, Devon Energy, Halliburton, and EOG Resources all dipped after reports that OPEC+ is weighing another output hike of 1.65 million barrels per day.

Canopy Growth shares fell another 6.7%, extending Tuesday’s losses after the cannabis company filed for a $200 million equity raise on Friday.

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

Market Wrap

US stocks close at record highs on US-China trade truce optimism

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all started off the week with record highs ahead of a big earnings week, with five of the members of the Magnificent 7 reporting.

Max Knoblauch2h

Bullish options flows boost Rivian

EV maker Rivian is up nearly 5% on Monday afternoon as bullish options flows lift the stock ahead of its third-quarter earnings, set to drop next week.

According to Bloomberg, Rivian call options traded outnumber put options more than five to one, for a put/call ratio of less than 0.2 as of 2:38 p.m. ET. That’s significantly less than the 20-day put/call average of 0.4. More than 116,000 call options have changed hands, more than 60% above the full-day average over the past 20 days.

Rivian’s upcoming earnings will measure the automaker’s sales ahead of the expiration of the $7,500 EV tax credit. Since September, Rivian has performed two rounds of layoffs as it seeks to cut costs amid the end of regulatory credits and ahead of next year’s lower-cost SUV launch.

Matt Phillips4h

Palantir inks defense deal with Poland, touches new intraday high

Palantir Technologies touched a new intraday high of $192.83 early Monday, as the company rode the China trade truce rally in AI tech stocks and retail favorites.

Palantir also signed a new deal to supply the government of Poland with data, AI, and cybersecurity software, according to Bloomberg.

Polish Minister of Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz and Palantir CEO Alex Karp signed the letter of intent on the deal, about which few details were released. Polish officials did signal that they were interested in Palantir software systems for “battlefield management” and logistics. Up more than 150% this year, Palantir reports Q3 earnings on November 3.

Poland Signs Palantir, Anduril Deals Amid Record Army Spending

J. Edward Moreno5h

Intellia tanks as it pauses late-stage CRISPR gene-editing trials after one patient was hospitalized

Intellia dropped sharply on Monday after it announced that it’s pausing two late-stage CRISPR gene-editing trials because one patient was hospitalized with liver damage.

Intellia had also disclosed in May that a patient had experienced elevated liver enzymes. The news is a major setback for the company, which currently has no products on the market and is working on a one-time treatment for heart and nerve conditions.

The news dragged down other companies working on CRISPR treatments, including Beam Therapeutics Inc, Crispr Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, and Prime Medicine.

Luke Kawa5h

Gold craters as retail traders pull money from commodity ETFs

As its fierce rally begins to fade, it looks like retail traders are waving au revoir to gold.

JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain noted that retail traders have pulled about $120 million from commodity ETFs as of 11 a.m. ET on Monday, a level that stands in the 0.4th percentile relative to its one-year average. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is down 2.8% as of 11:53 a.m. ET after suffering its worst loss since April 2013 last Tuesday. That day, retail had pulled just $50 million from commodity ETFs by 11 a.m.

The five-session average daily flows into the product hit an all-time high of nearly $1.1 billion last Monday as gold and silver had effectively become the new meme stocks, displaying strong momentum and heavy options activity.