US equity markets advanced in thin trading on Friday (10 July) - Dow up +369-points or +1.44% JPMorgan Chase & Co (up +5.4%) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (+4.4%) the leading index performers. The broader S&P500 gained +1.05%, with Financials (up +3.48%) and Energy (3.25%) leading nine of the eleven primary sectors higher. Health Care (down -0.22%) and Information Technology (-0.03%) were the only sectors to close lower. Airlines (United Airlines Holdings up +8.29% and Delta Air Lines Inc +5.61%) and cruise operators rebounded from sharp falls in the previous session. Carnival Corp jumped +10.8% after the cruise line operator said it was planning to resume operations in a phased manner and would operate with a smaller fleet on its return. NASDAQ rose +0.66% to 10,617.44 logging its third consecutive record closing high and 27th for 2020. Amazon.com Inc gained +0.5% to an all-time high after Citi hiked its target on the e-commerce giant to a Wall Street high of US$3,550 per share. Netflix Inc gained +8% (to US$548.73) and logged a fresh record high, buoyed by a bullish research note from Goldman Sachs that saw the investment bank lift its target price for the streaming platform by +24% to US$670 per share. Tesla Inc (up +10.78% to US$1,544.65) topped >US$1,500 per share. The latest rally lifted the electric vehicle maker to 13th in terms of the largest US companies by market capitalisation (at ~US$286B). Tesla’s latest rally also saw Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk’s wealth rise by US$6.5B to ~US$70.5B, lifting him to the seventh richest individual in the world and usurping the likes of Warren Buffet, Oracle Corp co-founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison and Google co-founder Sergey Brin according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. Tesla posts quarterly numbers on 22 July and analysts are forecasting the company to record its first cumulative four-quarter profit, which is a key hurdle for Tesla to be added to the S&P500 index.
