The tech industry bounced back once again Monday, helping to drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a new high after posting a 0.7% gain. The S&P 500 Index rose 0.8%, while the Nasdaq Composite was 1.4% better by day’s end.
Tech will take the lead again this morning, as Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) are both making moves higher. Meanwhile, the homebuilding industry is also earning attention thanks to Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) and its most recent corporate results.
Here’s what you should know heading into the Tuesday trading day.
Tesla Inc (TSLA)
TSLA stock is making yet another advance toward the $400 mark this morning amid news that it’s planning on expanding its business in Asia.
Specifically, the company reportedly is close to an agreement that would see it produce its vehicles in China. Tesla would build facilities in Shanghai’s Lingang development zone, Bloomberg reports, giving the company much more direct access to the Chinese market, as well as a break on the 25% in taxes Tesla currently pays because its cars are not produced within the country.
According to the report, to get the deal done, Tesla would need to set up a joint venture with a domestic firm. Those familiar with the matter say an announcement could come as early as this week.
For what it’s worth, Tesla — which refuted claims that it was planning on opening a gigafactory in China as recently as April — has not yet commented on the matter.
Still, TSLA stock is up roughly 3% on Tuesday morning, which if they hold up through the open would easily send shares to all-time intraday highs. Technically speaking, shares are well above all of their major moving averages, and have slowly been working off overbought conditions.
Heading into Tuesday, Tesla had gained 73% year-to-date.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD)
AMD shares are starting to build momentum once again as the chipmaker recovers from the June 9 swoon in tech.
Today, the bullishness in AMD stock is coming amid today’s release of its EPYC enterprise processors, based on its Zen architecture. Today’s release is expected to thrust Advanced Micro Devices into the server market, going up against Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and its Xeon CPUs.
EPYC will feature eight to 32 cores (16 to 64 threads), eight-channel memory and 64 PCIe lanes, with base speeds between 2.0GHz and 2.4GHz, hitting 3.2GHz once you get to the top-line versions.
Rosenblatt Securities’ Hans Mosesmann reiterated a “buy” rating on AMD stock last month in part because of bullishness on EPYC:
“More datapoints are coming out regarding AMD’s thrust in servers with the EPYC 1-socket vs. Xeon 2-socket debate that strikes us as quite disruptive to the hyperscale world (half the area, big memory bandwidth and I/O advantage for EPYC).”
AMD stock is up 2% this morning, marking what should be a third straight day of gains to help the stock rebound from declines stemming from a June 9 Goldman Sachs call warning of bubble valuations in the tech realm.
Lennar Corporation (LEN)
Shares of homebuilder Lennar are heading solidly higher on Tuesday amid a Street-beating second-quarter earnings report.
Revenues of $3.26 billion were a roughly 19% improvement year-over-year, and well more than the consensus estimate of $2.895 billion. Orders climbed 11.8% for the quarter. Meanwhile, profits far outpaced expectations, dropping just 4% to 91 cents per share. The pros saw Lennar shedding 18% on the top line to 78 cents per share.
LEN stock is up more than 4% in premarket trade, which should help lift the rest of the sector. However, those gains could be elevated or short-lived depending on what the National Association of Realtors reports on Wednesday when it unveils existing-home sales data.
Lennar stock is up more than 20% so far in 2017.
