Stock Market Today: Boeing, Tesla Spice Up a Bland Market Session

The broader market didn't have much giddy-up to start the week, with stocks mostly flat in the absence of any market-moving news.

But that should change shortly.

This week's earnings calendar (opens in new tab) features another bevy of pivotal reports – one that's heavy on retailers (opens in new tab) such as Target (TGT (opens in new tab)) and Home Depot (HD (opens in new tab)), but also includes other mega-caps such as Nvidia (NVDA (opens in new tab)) and Cisco Systems (CSCO (opens in new tab)). Tuesday morning will bring with it updates on monthly retail sales, industrial production, business inventories and other vital economic data.

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And tonight, investors will learn about the latest changes to the equity portfolio of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B (opens in new tab)); readers should check out our investing page for updates (opens in new tab) this evening.

Standing out Monday were a few single-stock moves.

Tesla (TSLA (opens in new tab), -1.9%), which declined considerably last week as CEO Elon Musk sold off billions of dollars worth of shares, fell again Monday after Musk threatened to dump more stock in a weekend Twitter fight with Sen. Bernie Sanders … and as rival EV maker Lucid Group's (LCID (opens in new tab), +2.2%) Air sedan won MotorTrend's Car of the Year award.

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Meanwhile, Boeing (BA (opens in new tab), +5.5%) popped amid reports that China might soon allow the 737 MAX to resume flying, and as a top executive told CNBC that the markets for freighter aircraft "are on fire right now."

The major indexes all finished lower, but by less than a tenth of a percent; the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 36,087, the S&P 500 at 4,682 and the Nasdaq Composite at 15,853.

Other news in the stock market today:

• The small-cap Russell 2000 declined by 0.5% to 2,400.
• U.S. crude futures eked out a 0.1% gain to settle at $80.88 per barrel.
• Gold futures slipped 0.1% to end at $1,866.60 an ounce, snapping a seven-day winning streak.
• The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) improved by 1.8% to 16.59.
• Bitcoin lost a little ground over the weekend, declining 0.6% to $63,794.61. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m. each trading day.)
• Oatly Group (OTLY (opens in new tab)) was one of the first companies on this week's earnings calendar, and the reaction to the oat milk producer's results were not good. In its third quarter, OTLY recorded a per-share loss of 7 cents – slimmer than the 9 cent-loss analysts were expecting – but revenue or $171.1 million fell short of the consensus $185.9 million estimate. Oatly cited supply-chain issues as the main catalyst for its revenue miss and said it expects full-year revenue to come in lower than what analysts are anticipating. OTLY ended the day down 20.8%.
• Dollar Tree (DLTR (opens in new tab)) stock jumped 14.3% today after a report in the Wall Street Journal (opens in new tab) late Friday indicated Mantle Ridge has taken a stake of "at least $1.8 billion" – or roughly 5.7% – in the discount retailer. According to people familiar with the matter, the activist investor is pushing for improvements at DLTR's Family Dollar chain in order to increase share price. Oppenheimer analysts Rupesh Parikh and Erica Eiler called the move a "positive," but "believe investors are best to remain on the sidelines for now" due to concerns over the company's ability to "deliver sustained levels of comparables and profit growth."

2022 Winners? Consider the Comeback Kids

As investors begin to peek ahead into 2022, they'll likely be looking for key themes that should dominate attention and drive outperformance. Those include the continued growth of cryptocurrencies (opens in new tab), and the emergence of the metaverse (opens in new tab) – two areas that have seen breakneck growth in 2021 and are expected to do the same next year.

However, 2022 is also expected to see a revival for some of 2020's trend stocks: industries that made gains during COVID-enforced lockdowns (think financial technology or e-commerce companies) but then in 2021 suffered pullbacks as investors turned to reopening plays, infrastructure stocks and other ideas.

The good news? Many of those same industries are poised to resume their long-term upward trends in 2022.

We've just highlighted video game stocks as one area that could see a resurgence; industry revenues have cooled following a banner 2020 but are expected to get back on track next year and beyond. Read on as we explore some of the video game industry's most attractive opportunities.