Nasdaq closes higher to start November, boosted by Amazon and other AI leaders

The Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 closed Monday's session in the green.

The Nasdaq gained 0.46% to close at 23,834.72, while the broad market index rose 0.17% to end at 6,851.97. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, closed lower by 226.19 points, or 0.48%, to 47,336.68.

— Sean Conlon

There are further gains ahead even after this year's strong equity rally, according to UBS.

"Concerns over high valuations persist, and the Federal Reserve's policy outlook appears murkier amid the ongoing US government shutdown," Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, global head of equities at UBS Financial Services, wrote on Monday. "But despite the strong gains in equity markets this year, we continue to believe that this bull market has room to run and investors should position to benefit from the rally."

— Sarah Min

The current reporting season's performance has come in strong so far, Bank of America said this week.

At the conclusion of the season's third week, 75% of S&P 500 companies have reported and beaten consensus by 6%, the firm revealed, noting that it was not only due to "solid" results from Big Tech names such as Alphabet and Amazon but also those from across the broader market.

With 63% of companies beating on both the top and bottom lines, the season is on pace to see the healthiest breadth since 2021, and third-quarter consensus earnings growth is tracking 12% compared to the prior-year period, the firm also said. That would signify the fourth straight quarter of double-digit growth.

— Sean Conlon

Shares of U.S. rare earth miners are falling after the White House said China had agreed to suspend sweeping export restrictions.

MP Materials fell more than 7%, USA Rare Earth tumbled about 14%, Energy Fuels shed almost 14%, and NioCorp Developments lost more than 11%.

The selloff comes after the White House issued a factsheet over the weekend with some details about the trade truce struck between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.

The White House said China has agreed to suspend sweeping export restrictions on rare earths that it announced last month and also agreed to issue general export licenses. The latter measure would effectively remove controls Beijing imposed in April and in October 2022 as well, according to the White House.

"We got no rare earth threat — that's gone, completely gone," Trump told CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday.

— Spencer Kimball

Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo maintained his overweight rating on JPMorgan and raised his price target for the bank to $350 per share from $345. This updated forecast represents upside of 12% from JPMorgan's Friday close.

Shares of JPMorgan have rallied 29% this year.

"JPM is a best-in-class global bank based on returns, market share gains, and ability to invest for organic growth. The stock is undervalued based on price-to-book for FINs stocks," Mayo wrote. "This report is issued ahead of our CEO mtg."

As additional catalysts, Mayo applauded JPMorgan's industry-leading efficiency even with a record tech spend of $18 billion in 2025.

"Indeed, now that JPM is past 'peak modernization' on tech spend, its incremental investments should further improve its competitive lead, such as with AI (#1 globally per Evident)," the analyst added. "That's why we call JPM the 'Nvidia of Banking.' Deregulation should further aid its ability to reduce expenses related to red tape."

— Lisa Kailai Han

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly said Monday she agreed with last week's decision to lower interest rates but favors a cautious approach for the December meeting.

"This really means assessing the incoming information, keep an open mind, and make the decision that balances those risks and ensures that the economy can go on and achieve this soft landing I think all of us have been working towards." Daly said during a Q&A on monetary policy and the economy.

The policymaker added that she sees "softness" in the labor market but not "weakness" while inflation is running above the Fed's 2% target.

Daly is a participant at Federal Open Market Committee meetings but will not vote until 2026.

— Jeff Cox

Deutsche Bank raised its price target on Tesla to $470 from $440 on Sunday, after incorporating higher estimates for the company's robotaxi business. The new target suggests about 3% upside from Friday's close.

CEO Elon Musk went on several podcasts ahead of Tesla's shareholder vote on Nov. 6 and indicated there should be 1,000 or more robotaxis in the Bay Area by year-end and at least 500 in Austin, analyst Edison Yu said in a note to clients.

"Assuming Tesla exits the year with around 1,500 vehicles in the fleet, we estimate it could reach >2,500 by mid-2026 after penetrating deeper into 4-5 incremental cities (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, etc...)," he wrote. "And while that number seems small, Waymo has garnered >20% of ride-hail market share in San Francisco using what we estimate to be ~800 AVs [autonomous vehicles]."

Shares of Tesla are up 16% year to date.

— Michelle Fox

• Ares Management — The private equity investment firm rose more than 6% on a better-than-expected profit for the third quarter. Ares reported after-tax realized income per share of $1.19, beating a FactSet estimate of $1.15 per share. The stock was on pace for its best day since April 9, when it surged 15.5%.
• Adeia — The tech licensing company fell 17% after it sued AMD for patent infringement over its semiconductor technology. "For years, AMD's products have incorporated and made extensive use of Adeia's patented semiconductor innovations, which have greatly contributed to their success as a market leader. After prolonged efforts to reach a mutually agreeable resolution without litigation, we believe this step was necessary to defend our intellectual property from AMD's continued unauthorized use," Adeia CEO Paul Davis said in a statement.
• Kontoor Brands — The outdoor apparel maker fell 8% on weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings guidance. The company sees Q4 earnings around $1.64 per share, while analysts expect a profit of $1.68 per share, per FactSet.

Read more here.

— Fred Imbert

Costco is back to being a top pick after the stock's recent underperformance, according to Oppenheimer.

"We believe COST's outperformance case is now even stronger in a mixed consumer spending backdrop given the company's superior value proposition, our expectations for continued share gains across the box, and positioning to a relatively higher affluent customer," the firm's Rupesh Parikh wrote on Monday. "Our updated top three top picks are ULTA, COST, and WMT."

Shares of the big-box retailer are down slightly this year, and are off its 52-week high by more than 15%. Yet Oppenheimer's $1,050 price target, revised lower from $1,130, nevertheless reflects upside of about 15% from Friday's close.

— Sarah Min

Bank of America's contrarian signal on stock market sentiment is nearing a level that would trigger a sell signal.

The bank's Sell Side Indicator nudged higher to 55.7% in October, a sixth consecutive month of gains that marks the longest streak since 2021. The indicator measures stock market portfolio allocations among Wall Street pros. A reading of around 58 marks extended sentiment that historically has been a good time to sell stocks.

On the bright side, the indicator's current level in neutral territory points to a solid backdrop for stocks. Historically, this level has been consistent with a 13% gain in the S&P 500 over the next six months.

— Jeff Cox

Shares of Beyond Meat fell on Monday after the company delayed its third-quarter financial results.

The plant-based meat maker will now report earnings after the market closes on Nov. 11. Beyond Meat said it delayed its results because it needs more time to calculate a material non-cash impairment charge related to certain long-lived assets. Read more.

— Spencer Kimball

Modest losses in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average and gains in the Nasdaq Composite belie the overwhelming number of stocks that are lower in early Monday trading.

More than 400 stocks in the S&P 500 index, or more than 80%, were lower, while 24 out of 30 companies in the Dow Industrials fell.

Of all the stocks that trade on the New York Stock Exchange, 1,783 declined on Monday versus 793 advancers. New 52-week lows beat new 52-week highs by 74 to 54. Down volume swamped up volume, 67% to 31%, according to FactSet data.

Although the Nasdaq Composite was higher, decliners topped advancers 2,610 to 1,362, while new lows exceeded new highs 142 to 131 in recent trading. The percentage of all Nasdaq volume that traded lower in price accounted for 42% of the total against 56% of up volume.

— Scott Schnipper

Factory activity in the U.S. pulled back further in October while employment picked up momentum and prices cooled, the Institute for Supply Management reported Monday.

The ISM manufacturing index for the month registered a 48.7% reading, representing the share of companies reporting growth. That was off 0.4 percentage point from September and below the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 49.3%.

Within the survey, the prices index fell 3.9 points though still was showing growth at 58%. Production slipped 2.8 points to 48.2% while employment edged higher to 46%, though still in contraction territory after rising 0.7 points.

— Jeff Cox

Shares of Coeur Mining fell about 8% after striking a deal to acquire New Gold for $7 billion in an all-stock deal.

New Gold shares were trading more than 3% higher.

The deal will create a completely North American precious metals mining company with a $20 billion market capitalization, the companies said. It will have seven operations producing 1.25 million gold equivalent ounces in 2026, including 20 million ounces of silver and 900,000 ounces of gold.

— Spencer Kimball

Stocks traded up on Monday morning to kick off November trading.

The S&P 500 advanced 0.5% just after the opening bell, while the Nasdaq Composite gained about 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded just above the flatline.

— Sean Conlon

OpenAI has signed a deal to buy $38 billion worth of capacity from Amazon Web Services, its first contract with the leader in cloud infrastructure and the latest sign that the $500 billion artificial intelligence startup is no longer reliant on Microsoft.

Under the agreement announced on Monday, OpenAI will immediately begin running workloads on AWS infrastructure, tapping hundreds of thousands of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) in the U.S., with plans to expand capacity in the coming years.

Amazon stock climbed about 5% following the news.

The first phase of the deal will use existing AWS data centers, and Amazon will eventually build out additional infrastructure for OpenAI.

"It's completely separate capacity that we're putting down," said Dave Brown, vice president of compute and machine learning services at AWS, in an interview. "Some of that capacity is already available, and OpenAI is making use of that." Read more.

— MacKenzie Sigalos

• Iren — The data center company jumped 22% after reaching a deal with Microsoft to provide the software and cloud computing provider with access to Nvidia GB300 GPUs over five years for $9.7 billion.
• Semiconductor manufacturers — The group advanced after Iren's nearly $10 billion deal to access Nvidia chips, which broadly lifted investor sentiment on semiconductor demand.  Nvidia rose nearly 2%, while Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices advanced roughly 4% and 1%, respectively.
• ON Semiconductor – ON added more than 3% after third-quarter profit and sales beat analyst estimates. On Semi earned an adjusted 63 cents per share on revenue of $1.55 billion, better than the 59 cents and $1.52 billion that analysts polled by FactSet forecast.

Read here for the full list of names.

— Liz Napolitano

Shares of On Semiconductor advanced almost 4% in premarket trading Monday on the heels of the company's third-quarter results.

On Semi posted adjusted earnings of 63 cents per share on revenue of $1.55 billion for the quarter, above the 59 cents in earnings per share and $1.52 billion in revenue that analysts polled by FactSet had estimated.

— Sean Conlon

Nvidia shares were up around 2% in the premarket on Monday after Microsoft said that the U.S. has allowed it to ship Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates.

"Microsoft was also the first company this year under the Trump administration to secure export licenses from the Commerce Department to ship GPUs to the UAE," the company said in a statement. "These licenses enable us to ship the equivalent of 60,400 additional A100 chips, in this instance involving Nvidia's even more advanced GB300 GPUs."

The company also said its investment in the UAE will now go from $7.3 billion from 2023 through 2025 to more than $7.9 billion from 2026 to 2029. Of that, $5.5 billion will go towards capital expenses for AI and cloud infrastructure. Combined, that brings Microsoft's UAE investment to $15.2 billion between 2023 and 2029.

— Sean Conlon

More than 300 S&P 500 companies have reported already, but an additional 100-plus names are set to post their results this week. Among them are McDonald's, Palantir and AMD.

Read CNBC Pro's earnings playbook for what to expect out of some of this week's biggest releases.

— Fred Imbert

Shares of Kenvue rallied 20% after the company — which owns Tylenol, Motrin and other brands — agreed to be acquired by Kimberly-Clark in a $48.7 billion in cash and stock. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.

"Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue have identified approximately $1.9 billion in cost synergies and approximately $500 million in incremental profit from revenue synergies, partially offset by reinvestment of approximately $300 million. The cost synergies are expected to be captured in the first three years following closing, and the revenue synergies are expected to be captured within four years post close," the two companies said in a statement.

— Fred Imbert

Shares of Iren rallied 22% in the premarket after the data center company reached a deal with Microsoft to provide the tech giant with Nvidia GB300 GPUs over five years for $9.7 billion.

"This agreement not only validates IREN's position as a trusted provider of AI Cloud services, but also opens access to a new customer segment among global hyperscalers," co-CEO Daniel Roberts said in a statement. "It marks another major step forward for IREN as we continue to expand large-scale GPU deployments across our 3GW secured power portfolio in North America, reinforcing our position as a leading AI Cloud Service Provider."

— Fred Imbert

Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday reported a sharp year-over-year increase in operating earnings, led by a more than 200% in insurance underwriting income.

The Warren Buffett-led conglomerate's profits from its wholly owned businesses jumped 34% to $13.485 billion during the third quarter.

Berkshire didn't buy back any stock, and its cash reserves swelled to $381.6 billion, a record.

Class B shares were up more than 1% in the premarket Monday.

Read more here.

— Fred Imbert

S&P 500 futures ticked higher by 0.1% along with Nasdaq-100 futures. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures advanced 16 points, or less than 0.1%.

-- Fred Imbert