Dow hits record high as tech stocks post gains

Aug. 3 (UPI) — The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high on Monday, buoyed up by rising tech stocks and falling oil prices.

The Dow closed at 53,178.41, jumping 693.38 points, or 1.32%.

Amazon stock rose by more than 4% to a record $3 trillion market capitalization. Also on the rise were Meta Platforms at 6% and Nvidia at 3%, as well as Alphabet and Microsoft at 5% each.

Jed Ellerbroek, a portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, told CNBC, “The cloud computing giants are very well positioned and semiconductors remains in rapid growth mode.”

“The market is pricing in that big tech capex spending is earnings an attractive return on investment,” Ellerbroek told the outlet.

“Semiconductors and data center capex beneficiaries doubled or more in 2Q, then had a huge decline in July, but the fundamental truth was unchanged that whole time: demand for accelerated computing is well above supply, and the gap isn’t closing.”

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, fell nearly 5% to $83 per barrel.

Michael Monaghan, a partner and portfolio manager at Founder ETFs, told CNBC the drop was likely related to President Donald Trump announcing the U.S. was backing off from further escalations in Iran.

“The weight of the AI sell-off is gone right as [Situational Awareness] got liquidated last week, and then the biggest thing is there was some fear going into the weekend of more Middle East instability,” Monaghan told the news outlet.

“Even though that ebbs and flows and seems to be on-off every single week, the tone and the rhetoric really seems to be we’re going to try and get this thing fixed,” he added.