S&P 500 & Nasdaq Notch New All-Time Closing Highs

Monday, July 28, 2025

Markets lost a bit of steam mid-session this Monday, but a late surge into the close brought the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indexes to new record closing highs. The Dow dipped slightly: -64 points, -0.14%, while the S&P 500 grew a mere 1 point, +0.02%, and the Nasdaq came up +70 points, +0.33%. The small-cap Russell 2000 also finished the day slightly in the red: -4 points, -0.19%.

From April 9th lows — the day President Trump put a pause on his draconian tariff policy with nearly all U.S. trading partners — we see sizable gains across the board: the Dow +16%, the Russell 2000 +21%, the S&P 500 +23% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq, carrying the lion’s share of the AI trade which has led markets all year, is up close to +30% over these 16 some-odd weeks.
 

Earnings Reports After Today’s Close

Electronic design automation software company Cadence Design Systems CDNS is up big after an impressive showing in its Q2 report released after the closing bell. Earnings of $1.65 per share improved over the $1.57 in the Zacks consensus, which itself depicted growth of more than +22% year over year. Revenues of $1.28 billion neatly overtook estimates of $1.26 billion — also up big year over year. Guidance for full-year 2025 is the icing on the cake. Shares are up +7.5% in late trading at this hour.

Household durable goods manufacturer Whirlpool WHR, on the other hand, missed expectations on its bottom line by two solid dimes to $1.34 per share, while meeting the $3.77 billion in the Zacks consensus exactly on the top line. North America orders outperformed expectations, but still came in -4.6% year over year. Full-year guidance for earnings is well off what analysts had previous thought, and have come down on the top line too. Shares have fallen -12.5% in the after market.
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market on Tuesday

Tomorrow will be a big day for both earnings releases and economic reports. A new U.S. Trade Balance joins Retail/Wholesale Inventories for June, Case-Shiller Home Prices for May, Consumer Confidence for July and a new JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) report, also for June.

Of these, the JOLTS report marks the first metric hitting the tape for “Jobs Week,” albeit a month in arrears from jobs data coming out later in the week. Expectations are for 7.5 million job openings last month, down from the 7.74 million reported a month ago — the highest month of the year, bouncing off March near-term lows of 7.2 million. Accommodation and Food Services, particularly in the South, had by far the most amount of job openings in last month’s report.

Q2 earnings also revs up Tuesday morning, when we hear from Boeing BA, Procter & Gamble PG, Merck MRK, UnitedHealth UNH, PayPal PYPL and UPS UPS, all in the morning. After tomorrow’s close, we’ll get results from Starbucks SBUX and Visa V.

Finally, the first day of the two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings commence. On Wednesday, the Fed will decide on new interest rate policy, but there is a more than +95% chance that no move is made on the 4.25-4.50% Fed funds rate we’ve seen since December of last year. Expect to hear from President Trump on this matter, however.

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