Amazon.com's market value crossed $3 trillion for the first time Monday, capping a broad Wall Street rally that pushed the S&P 500 to within 0.1 percent of its all-time high as easing oil prices and strong cloud earnings from the largest technology companies eased fears that inflation would keep climbing.
The move puts the U.S. equity market back at the edge of a record it last set earlier this summer, after a frenetic July in which the war with Iran sent crude prices sharply higher and swung the index up and down before it finished the month roughly where it started. Amazon's milestone, together with second-quarter revenue beats at Microsoft and Oracle, gave investors a fresh reason to bet that artificial-intelligence spending is translating into corporate profits rather than only into rising data-center bills.
On the tape
The S&P 500 jumped 1.5 percent Monday and sits 0.1 percent below its summer record, the Associated Press reported. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 693 points, or 1.3 percent, to an all-time high, and the Nasdaq composite leaped 2.1 percent. Brent crude fell 4.7 percent to $83.77 a barrel after President Trump said over the weekend that he had decided to hold off on new strikes against Iran at the urging of allies in the region. That combination — cheaper oil, a receding war premium and record highs on the Dow — supplied the sort of session Wall Street had been waiting for since crude first spiked in July.
Amazon's number
Amazon's market capitalization topped a new all-time high of $3 trillion following its second-quarter results, Semafor reported, as the AI boom drove demand for the company's cloud business. Microsoft and Oracle also beat second-quarter revenue expectations, Semafor said, extending a pattern in which the biggest hyperscalers are booking faster growth even as their capital spending on AI data centers climbs.
"Amazon is probably the most emblematic of the economy right now," a market strategist told Reuters, according to Semafor. Absent a turndown in AI spending among the hyperscalers, the strategist said, technology companies have "unleashed a much broader all-clear for the market."
Oil eases
Monday's drop in crude reversed part of July's spike, when the war with Iran had sent oil prices higher and whipsawed stocks up and down for the month. Trump's weekend decision to hold off on further strikes, and the sharp fall in Brent, calmed Wall Street's most pressing inflation worry and helped explain the breadth of Monday's rally: the Dow's new high, alongside the Nasdaq's 2.1 percent jump, showed the bid running well beyond the AI leaders.
The other side
Both of Monday's cited reports on the rally came from wire and business outlets, and no bearish market voices on the durability of the AI-earnings trade appeared in the coverage. Semafor itself flagged the shadow over the tape, noting that "investor jitters about the Iran war, inflation, and AI spending" have not gone away even as corporate profits keep climbing. Whether the hyperscalers can keep beating expectations while their capital-spending bills grow, and whether the Iran de-escalation holds long enough to keep crude off Wall Street's mind, are questions Monday's tape did not answer.
What's next
The S&P 500's summer closing high now stands 0.1 percent above Monday's finish, leaving the index a single session's move from a new record.