On Monday, tech stocks saw gains during intraday trading. The S&P 500 tech sector was up over 1% at 11:45 a.m. ET, while the broader S&P 500 rose by 0.6% and the Nasdaq gained 0.7%.
One of the main drivers of these gains was the optimistic outlook for technology companies in general, as investors became more confident about their future prospects after months of uncertainty due to the pandemic. Additionally, some individual companies saw significant growth and received positive news from analysts, further boosting their share prices.
For example, Palantir shares increased by over 6% to reach $24.74 in intraday trading ahead of its earnings report later in the day. Analysts expect to see year-over-year growth in Palantir’s earnings due to increased demand from government and commercial customers for its artificial intelligence (AI) platform. This news helped push up Palantir’s share price and made it one of the top performers on Monday morning.
Micron Technology also saw a rise in its shares of 4.5% to $120 after Baird analysts upgraded the stock to “outperform” from “neutral” and raised their price target to $150 from $115. The analysts pointed to an “unprecedented outlook for memory” over the next 12-18 months, which helped boost Micron’s share price and also made it one of the top performers on Monday morning.
Reddit shares also surged by over 6% to $49.62 following Bank of America’s increase in price target to $50 from $46 earlier that day. The analysts expect positive results in the social media company’s advertising and data licensing revenue for the first quarter, which helped push up Reddit’s share price and make it one of the top performers on Monday morning as well.
Overall, these strong performances by tech stocks were driven by a combination of factors including optimism about technology companies’ future prospects, positive news from individual companies’ earnings reports or analyst upgrades, and overall market trends towards riskier assets such as stocks rather than bonds or other fixed income investments.
