Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq rise to kick off big week of Big Tech earnings, Fed meeting

Goldman Sachs (GS) shares rose slightly Monday as the bank said it is elevating seven partners from its asset and wealth division to its management committee, bringing the total count of Goldman partners on the crucial decision-making board to 46 members.

The move is the latest aimed at bolstering the prominence of the Wall Street bank’s asset manager arm. Known for its enormous dealmaking and trading operations, the major Wall Street bank is seeking to bolster its prominence as an asset and wealth manager.

Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs set new targets for its asset and wealth management division, including raising its returns forecast from the midteens to the highteens. The bank also boosted its quarterly dividend by 50 cents to $4.50.

“The opportunity to continue to grow our franchise across [asset and wealth management] is a core strategic objective for the firm,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in a statement.

“This group of leaders will help us advance our goals as we continue to build a global, scaled AWM platform.”

The new members include four from Goldman’s asset management division: two co-heads of private credit James Reynolds and Vivek Bantwal as well as Michael Brandmeyer, chief investment officer for the asset management division’s external investing group and Gregory Calnon, global co-head of Public Investing. The committee’s three other new members come from Goldman’s wealth management division.

Goldman is also promoting former head of private wealth management John Mallory and Nishi Somaiya, former head of private banking to be global co-heads of wealth management. Mallory and Somaiya will become management committee members along with Kristin Olson, global head of alternatives within wealth management.

Rare earth stocks continued to soar late Monday morning, extending to premarket gains.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré writes:

Apple (AAPL) stock climbed 2.6% Monday morning, while Meta (META) added 1.6% and Microsoft (MSFT) rose nearly 1%.

The three tech giants and Tesla (TSLA) are set to kick off Big Tech earnings this week with reports from the latter two firms on Wednesday after the bell as investors eye AI cloud spending.

Then, one from Apple on Thursday afternoon could reveal further details about the iPhone maker’s long-awaited AI strategy since it inked a partnership with Google (GOOG) to use Gemini to power its AI apps and next-generation voice assistant Siri.

For its part, Tesla fell 2.5%. The EV-maker is set to release its quarterly results on Wednesday as well.

US stocks rose at the market open to reverse mild premarket losses.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) added 0.3%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) both ticked up 0.2%.

The gains come after back-to-back weekly losses for Wall Street’s major indexes as geopolitical tensions stoked by President Trump rattled markets.

Natural gas futures (NG=F) reset over the weekend, gapping down by more than 25% as traders took profit.

Futures on gas had spiked significantly in the lead-up to the arrival of Winter Storm Fern, climbing by 75% in the trading sessions preceding Thursday to mark the biggest five-day gain since 1990.

Gas is the dominant source of heating fuel throughout the US, and the energy product often sees strong price action during the winter as customers throughout the country turn on their heaters and backup generators. Pipelines tend to run at or near their full levels through the winter, which much of their capacity taken up by long-term contracts signed earlier in the year — leaving little room to absorb a winter storm’s heightened demand.

During major winter weather events, such as Winter Storm Fern or 2021’s Winter Storm Uri that knocked out power throughout Texas’s ERCOT region, natural gas can experience significant volatility.

Even though this storm’s effects have been severe — as of Monday morning, more than 800,000 people throughout the US remained without power — there has been little new information to trigger another major surge upward in pricing.

As of Monday morning, natural gas futures were hovering around end-of-December prices.

Shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) jumped as much as 10% in premarket Monday as AI titan Nvidia (NVDA) said it is investing another $2 billion in the company.

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US gold mining companies Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) and Newmont (NEM) climbed around 4% as gold topped $5,000 an ounce for the first time. Investors piled into safe-haven assets amid heightened risk of another US government shutdown.

Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. (SRPT) stock rose 7% on Monday during premarket hours after announcing on Friday that it will present three-year, topline functional results from its Phase 3 study of a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Intel (INTC) stock fell 1% before the bell today. Shares in the chipmaker fell 17% on Friday after the company said it expects losses to continue into the first quarter.