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Stocks bounced back Tuesday as market participants brushed off geopolitical worries and cheered falling oil prices. A round of well-received earnings reports and a rally in tech stocks also lifted sentiment, with two of the three main equity indexes ending the day with new record highs.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 1% to 25,326 and the broader S&P 500 gained 0.8% to 7,259 — their highest closes on record — while the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7% to 49,298.
Oil prices, on the other hand, retreated after the U.S. said the ceasefire with Iran remains in place despite Tehran’s attacks against the United Arab Emirates on Monday. Front-month West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell nearly 4% to settle at $102.27 per barrel.
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DuPont jumps on beat-and-raise quarter
Market participants have a jam-packed earnings calendar to sift through this week. DuPont (DD, +8.4%) was one of several firms that reported this morning, with the chemicals company unveiling higher-than-expected first-quarter earnings of 55 cents per share on in-line revenue of $1.7 billion.
DD also raised its full-year outlook and announced a new $275 million stock buyback program.
In mid-April, Argus Research analyst Alexandra Yates reiterated her Buy rating on the blue chip stock. “DuPont is a leading Materials company that is continually refining its lineup of businesses,” she writes.
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Following the recent spin-off of its electronics business, Qnity, Yates says the company “will have a strong presence in fast-growing healthcare end markets,” and be a leading provider “in key technologies enabling advanced mobility” and “of advanced solutions serving safety, construction, aerospace, and other industrial-based end markets.”
Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD, +8.7%), Pinterest (PINS, +6.8%) and Rockwell Automation (ROK, +8.9%) were also post-earnings winners.
Palantir slumps after earnings
Palantir Technologies (PLTR) found itself in negative territory after the Big Data provider reported its first-quarter results.
PLTR beat on both its top and bottom lines, with first-quarter revenue up 85% year over year — the fastest pace of growth since the company went public in 2020. Palantir also raised its full-year guidance.
But the tech stock slumped 6.9% after earnings. This could be due to a slight quarter-to-quarter deceleration in U.S. commercial revenue growth (+133% YoY in Q1 vs +137% YoY in Q4). It could also be more profit-taking on an overvalued stock.
After its share price surged fourfold in 2024 and more than doubled in 2025, PLTR is down nearly 24% so far in 2026.
And despite the company’s “exceptional” fundamentals, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill has an Underperform (Sell) on PLTR as a result of its “unfavorable” risk/reward ratio, saying it “requires a heroic durability assumption to justify the current multiple.”
Intel soars on rumors of a potential Apple partnership
Intel (INTC) jumped 12.9% — making it the best-performing S&P 500 stock and lifting the broader technology sector. Boosting the shares was a Bloomberg report that said Apple (AAPL, +2.6%) is in talks with Intel and Samsung to produce the main chips for its devices.
The companies have not commented on the report, but this move would create an alternate option to long-term Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM, -1.8%).
Tuesday’s pop is more of the same for INTC, which has tripled since the start of the year and just wrapped up its best monthly performance ever. Still, the consensus recommendation among the 48 analysts following the chip stock who are tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence is Hold.
Speaking for the pros is Needham analyst Quinn Bolton, who has a Hold rating on INTC: “While the company’s turnaround is clearly underway and server CPU demand is robust, we believe the shares fully reflect the company’s prospects.”
