Investors, traders and speculators welcomed President Donald Trump's latest comments on China and ambitious words from one of his most ardent supporters in Corporate America with a broad open-to-close rally on Monday. Markets seem content with the incoming data we have at the beginning of another important week for earnings.
"I think when we finish our meetings in South Korea, China and I will have a really fair and really great trade deal together," Trump told White House reporters on Monday, previewing a scheduled October 31 summit with President Xi Jinping.
A note at the top of the Conference Board's release of its Leading Economic Index for September explains today's general lack of incoming data from the economic calendar as delays "due to the U.S. federal government shutdown."
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The Conference Board will resume publication of the LEI and other employment-data-dependent reports once updated government numbers are released. And we will see delayed September Consumer Price Index (CPI) data on Friday.
The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) retreated to 18.38 after rising to a six-month intraday high of 28.99 on Friday. A "normal" range for what's widely recognized as the market's "fear index" is between 12 and 20.
At Monday's closing bell, the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 1.1% to 46,706, the broad-based S&P 500 was up 1.1% at 6,753 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had risen 1.4% to 22,990.
Steelmaker seeks rare earth exposure
Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF, +21.1%) Chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves proclaimed his support for the White House, including its new tariffs, in the most pointed commentary about the then-simmering controversy over whether President Trump had the power to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
Goncalves is now taking operational steps to position CLF as another stock to buy for the Trump presidency, announcing along with third-quarter earnings that Cleveland-Cliffs will seek to develop deposits of rare earth elements and minerals.
Cleveland-Cliffs reported revenue of $4.7 billion, up from $4.6 billion a year ago, and a loss of 51 cents per share, narrower than a 52-cent loss in the third quarter of 2024.
Goncalves noted "a clear sign of demand recovery for automotive-grade steel made in the USA," calling it "a direct consequence of the new trade environment implemented and enforced by the Trump administration." The CEO said Cleveland-Cliffs has reached an agreement with an unnamed "major global steel producer" that will be "highly accretive" for shareholders.
And, based on the "renewed importance of rare earths" in light of China's efforts to control global supplies of inputs critical to smartphones and computers as well as electric vehicles and batteries, Cleveland-Cliffs is re-focusing on potential opportunities at sites in Michigan and Minnesota.
"At these two sites," the CEO explains, "geological surveys show key indicators of rare-earth mineralization. If successful, it would align Cleveland-Cliffs with the broader national strategy for critical material independence, similar to what we achieved in steel."
AAPL hits a new high
Apple (AAPL, +3.9%) was one of the top-performing Dow Jones stocks Monday and hit its first new all-time high of 2025 after Counterpoint Research said the iPhone 17 outsold the iPhone 16 by 14% during their respective first 10 days on the market in the U.S. and China.
The Magnificent 7 stock had lagged the S&P 500 through Friday, logging a gain of 1.1% vs 14.5% for the index. The iPhone maker, which generates more than 50% of its revenue from sales of the device, had posted a 46.7% rally off its April low.
Counterpoint analyst Ivan Lam cited a better display, more storage and an updated chip for the new model's relative success. "Consumers are resonating with the base model iPhone 17 on improved specs and upgrades," Lam wrote.
"In China, sales are almost double those of the base iPhone 16 over the initial availability period." The analyst says momentum in October "continues to be good." Lam adds that the iPhone 17 Pro Max is seeing strong demand in the U.S. and is drawing customers who last bought handsets during the pandemic to buy new devices.
Loop Capital analyst Ananda Baruah raised his rating on AAPL stock from Hold to Buy and his 12-month target price from $226 to $315. "We are now at the front end of Apple's long-anticipated adoption cycle," Baruah writes, citing "a combination of refresh cycle and demand catalyzed by new design cycles."
About that AWS outage
Amazon.com (AMZN, +1.6%) was not at all worse for wear after a widespread outage at its Amazon Web Services affected government agencies and financial platforms as well as AI companies and its own e-commerce operations. The AWS Health Dashboard showed network connectivity issues for multiple services on the East Coast. AWS accounts for approximately one-third of the entire cloud computing market.
Management attributed the outage to a malfunction in a digital directory for a key database. Robinhood Markets (HOOD, +4.5%) said its services have recovered, while Coinbase Global (COIN, +2.3%) continues to monitor the situation.
Problems at privately held AI firm Perplexity and the British tax authority have also been fixed.
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