SPX: S&P 500 Gains 0.3% as Earnings Season Rolls On with Amazon Up Next

Tesla stole the spotlight Monday with its shares jumping 15%, helping stir a broad-based move to the upside.

• The S&P 500 added 0.3% on Monday, edging higher thanks in large part to EV maker Tesla TSLA. The car company’s shares jumped a whopping 15%, hurting short sellers in the process. Shares soared after Elon Musk struck a deal with China to roll out Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver-assistance service. The other two major indexes — the Nasdaq and the Dow Jones — also closed in the green.
• Signs of optimism are welcome news for markets ahead of a string of economic events and data. Investors will be on the lookout for the latest interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. Nonfarm payrolls for April are dropping on Friday with consensus pinned at 243,000 new jobs created. Before that, Amazon reports earnings on Tuesday after the closing bell.
• Amazon AMZN is expected to post strong growth at its cloud computing unit — Amazon Web Services (AWS). More than that, investors are drooling over a possible surprise announcement on dividends. The tech giant is the only company in the S&P 500 that’s worth over a $1 trillion and doesn’t pay a dividend. Will it change that and join Facebook parent Meta META and Google parent Alphabet GOOGL, both of which announced a dividend this year?