Both the Dow and S&P500 hit fresh record highs as earnings season kicked in to high gear in one of the heaviest reporting weeks of the quarter, with bellwethers in multiple sectors poised to announce results - Dow up +64-points or +0.18% to 35,741.15, after establishing a new all-time intraday record at 35,787.04. The broader S&P500 added +0.47% to 4,566.48 and also hit a intra-day record high of 4,572.62, with nine of the 11 major S&P sectors advancing. Consumer Discretionary (up +2.11%) and Energy (+1.41%) were the best performing primary sectors overnight. Utilities (down -0.43%) and Financials (-0.16%) were the only primary sectors to settle in the red. Tesla Inc jumped +12.66% to its own new record of US$1,024.86 per share and breached >US$1 trillion in market capitalisation, after car rental firm Hertz Global Holdings Inc placed an order for 100,000 Tesla cars, while Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the stock to US$1,200 from US$900 per share. Tesla joins a select group of mega tech stocks that include Apple Inc (down -0.03%) with a market cap of ~US$2.5 trillion, followed by Microsoft Corp (-0.33%) at ~US$2.3 trillion, Google-parent Alphabet Inc (up+0.11%) at ~US$1.8 trillion and Amazon.com Inc (-0.46%) at US$1.7 trillion. Tesla also edged out Facebook Inc (with a current market cap of ~US$900B) to become the fifth largest US company by market cap. The Nasdaq +0.90%. PayPal Inc gained +2.70% after the payments company scrapped plans to buy the digital pinboard site Pinterest Inc (down -12.71%) for as much as US$45B.The small capitalisation Russell 2000 rose +0.93%.
