By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The Dow rallied on Tuesday, driven by a rally in cyclical stocks on optimism over the vaccine rollout and mostly positive earnings ahead of major reports from Google and Amazon.
The rose 1.92%, or 580 points. The was 1.72%, while the jumped 1.72%.
Financials, mostly banks, led the move higher as bank stocks were supported by rising bond yields on bets for a faster recovery as the Covid-19 vaccine roll out continues amid slowing infection rates.
Bank of America (NYSE:), and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:) jumped 3%, while Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:) was up 4%. Rising U.S. government bond yields tend to boost the net interest income that banks earn on their loan products.
Coronavirus infections remained below 150,000 for the fifth day in a row.
A slew of mostly positive earnings supported investor sentiment on stocks.
Pfizer (NYSE:) raised its full-year earnings guidance and reported mixed earnings as earnings missed, but revenue topped Wall Street estimates in the fourth quarter. The drug maker said it expects to sell $15 billion worth of its Covid-19 vaccine this year and brought forward its 200 million U.S. production to May from July.
United Parcel Service (NYSE:), meanwhile, topped quarter and earnings and revenue as the pandemic-fueled demand in online shopping boosted deliveries.
Harley-Davidson (NYSE:) slipped 18% after reporting an unexpected loss in the fourth quarter as shipments fell short of expectations to a more than 20-year low. The company, however, has a five-year turnaround plan aimed at generating low double-digit earnings growth through 2025.
The shift to focus on earnings comes as the short-squeeze trade appears to have run out of steam. GameStop (NYSE:) plunged even as Robinhood lifted restrictions on buying shares in the video game retailer.
AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE:) slipped 39%, BlackBerry (NYSE:) fell 20%, and Nokia Corp ADR (NYSE:) was down 8%.
Tech, meanwhile, is expected to come under further scrutiny after the closing bell as Amazon.com (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) report results.
Amazon.com’s high margin cloud business, Amazon Web Services, will be one of the key takeaways for investors in the wake of an acceleration in the number of companies transitioning to the cloud.
“We believe there is ample room for upside to profitability in Q4, aided by lower-than-expected COVID-related expenses,” Wedbush said in a note.
Walt Disney (NYSE:), meanwhile, was one of the biggest gainers on the Dow ahead of its quarterly results due later this week. Qualcomm (NASDAQ:), eBay (NASDAQ:) and PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:) are also among the notable companies set to report earnings later this week.
In other news, Uber (NYSE:) jumped nearly 8% after it announced a deal to acquire alcohol-delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion. Drizly will be incorporated into Uber Eats business, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of 20218
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