By Teresa Rivas

No June Gloom. It's a new month, but the same old market factors keep driving stocks higher. All three major index closed at new records on Monday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1% while the S&P 500 was up 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.4%. The latter two were both bolstered by gains in the software sector.

The tail end of a robust first-quarter earnings season, ongoing artificial intelligence strength, and inflation figures roughly in line with expectations were enough to push equities higher today -- familiar trends that have helped push the Nasdaq to its best two-month stretch in decades.

Elsewhere on Monday, investors got a positive read on manufacturing, as the Institute for Supply Management's Purchasing Managers Index, or PMI, rose to a four-year high. The print showed five straight months of expansion, even though commentary from businesses was negative, citing the Iran War and tariffs.

The survey "shows that the economy continues to expand in the second quarter, albeit with winners and losers," writes Fifth Third Commercial Bank Chief U.S. Economist Bill Adams. "The economy looks to have grown at a decent clip in the first half of 2026."

The price of oil jumped on Monday as peace talks between the U.S. and Iran once again broke down. But that wasn't enough to weigh on markets in a significant way.

"While policy and geopolitical uncertainty remain, underlying price trends are stabilizing and the broader economic environment continues to support steady growth and improving market breadth," notes Jason Vaillancourt, Columbia Threadneedle's chief portfolio officer.

Why worry about war when there are growing earnings and a strong economic backdrop to watch instead?

The Hot Stock: MGM International +16.1% The Biggest Loser: Cboe Global Markets -9.8%

Best Sector: Information Technology +2.5% Worst Sector: Utilities -3.1%

Hot Streak

The S&P 500 is coming off nine straight weeks of gains, its longest winning streak since 2023, and its largest two-month percentage gain since May 2020. But how long can the good times last?

On a positive note, this type of upswing can have a momentum of its own. "There have been 13 such streaks since 1928, and the following three months have been positive each time, by an average of 10%, and the following 12 months have averaged 22%," writes Mark Hackett, Chief Market Strategist for Nationwide. June has also been good to investors recently, with the index notching gains for the month in nine of the past 10 years.

Even by historical metrics, however, the S&P 500's latest run has been a big one. As Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial notes, the index gained about 19% during its nine-week streak, its strongest performance in 75 years. (The previous nine-week winning runs generated a 10.4% average gain.)

Yet he too likes the odds that the index will continue to climb. In the 10 other streaks since 1950, the median return over the following one-, three-, and six-month periods were 1.6%, 2.4%, and 8.0%, respectively.

What ultimately happens will likely depend on the usual suspects. As noted above, tech was the main fuel behind the S&P 500 and Nasdaq's new highs today. That was true last week as well, with mega-cap tech names like Micron, Microsoft, and Broadcom accounting for more than two-thirds of the S&P 500's weekly gain. Given the top 10 stocks in index are all tech related and account for nearly 40% of its weight, it seems wherever tech goes, the S&P 500 will follow.

"While concentrated leadership has not prevented further gains, it does create a less balanced advance," Turnquist writes. "If the current leaders begin to consolidate or retrace, stronger participation from the broader market will likely be necessary to prevent the index from losing momentum."

The Calendar

Dollar General, Palo Alto Networks, and Ulta Beauty report quarterly results tomorrow.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The consensus call is for 6.85 million job openings on the last business day of April, slightly less than in March.

-- Dan Lam

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June 01, 2026 19:55 ET (23:55 GMT)

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