Stock Market Today: Dow Starts Week on Strong Footing as Energy, Tech Gain

© Reuters.

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com -- The Dow closed higher Monday, as a rise in energy stocks and a rally in Apple helped the broader market start the week on the front foot, a day ahead of an inflation report expected to show that price pressures are cooling.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7%, or 229 points, the Nasdaq was up 1.3% and the S&P 500 gained 1.1%

Following a strong end to the week, technology added to recent gains as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) rallied almost 4%.

Apple launched a slew of new products last week including its latest iPhones that some say are seeing more pre-order demand than the iPhones 13 did when they rolled out last year.

“So far demand and orders for iPhone 14 are tracking slightly ahead of iPhone 13 and are tracking ahead of our expectations out of the gates,” Wedbush said in a note.

Semiconductor stocks ended the day in the green after recovering losses following reports the U.S. government is drawing up plans to impose fresh restrictions on chip exports to China.

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), meanwhile, said an alleged payment of about $7.7 million to a whistleblower didn’t violate the terms of its deal with Elon Musk, who made a third attempt to abandon his plan to buy the social media company. The stock closed nearly 2% lower.

The update arrived just a day ahead of a Twitter shareholder vote on whether to approve or reject Musk’s takeover offer.

Energy climbed more than 1%, riding on the coattails of rising oil prices as investors weighed up potential supply distributions after the Iran nuclear deal hit a snag, and Europe's embargo on Russian oil is set to begin on Dec. 5.

Devon Energy (NYSE:DVN) and Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE:PXD) gained almost 4%, while APA (NASDAQ:APA) gained 5%.

The move higher in the broader market comes ahead of an inflation report that economists’ forecast shows further slowing headline inflation, driven by lower oil prices.

But core inflation, which excludes food and energy, is expected to rise owing to a “services inflation due to wage pressures, labor shortages, and elevated short-term inflation expectations,” Goldman Sachs said, forecasting a 0.3% rise in August.  

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to deliver a 75-basis-point rate hike next week, and will likely continue to tighten monetary policy “until growth is clearly headed to below trend rates,” Morgan Stanley said in a note.

In cryptocurrency-related stocks, Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA), Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:COIN), and Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:RIOT) were pushed higher by a more than 3% climb in bitcoin as the popular crypto topped $23,000.