Stock Market Today: Dow Gains 188 Points To Start the Short Week

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Stocks opened lower Monday but the main indexes found their footing by lunchtime and rallied into the close. Technology stocks helped lead the charge, with Autodesk (ADSK) surging on activist investor news. The software maker was hardly the day's only big gainer, though, with several semiconductor stocks notching significant wins.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.5% at 38,778 and the S&P 500 was 0.8% higher at 5,473. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed, gaining 1.0% to 17,857 as several large- and mega-cap stocks popped.

Autodesk, for one, jumped 6.5% on news Starboard Value has built a roughly $500 million stake in the company. According to The Wall Street Journal, the activist investor plans to push for major changes at the software firm, including improving its corporate governance.

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Chip stocks rally to start the week

While ADSK stock's rally was notable, the broad upside seen across semiconductor stocks was arguably more impressive.

Micron Technology (MU), for instance, gained 4.6% after Susquehanna International Group analyst Mehdi Hosseini raised his price target on the memory chipmaker to $185 from $143. MU has already more than doubled for the year to date and the new price target represents implied upside of more than 25% to current levels. It also comes ahead of Micron's June 26 appearance on the earnings calendar.

Hosseini says there is increased confidence in pricing trends for DRAM and NAND chips, which should help Micron post a beat-and-raise quarter. "MU has been one of our top long ideas and remains as such," the analyst adds.

Micron's gain created a halo effect for other chip stocks, including Super Micro Computer (SMCI, +5.1%) and Broadcom (AVGO, +5.4%).

Adobe pulls back on profit-taking

Not all tech stocks were higher today, though. Following Friday's red-hot post-earnings rally, Adobe (ADBE) shares finished 1.3% lower today. However, this negative price action was likely just some profit-taking given the Photoshop maker's longer-term prospects.

In its fiscal second-quarter earnings report released Thursday night, Adobe "put artificial intelligence (AI) center stage and is most strongly positioned to benefit from the recent advancements in generative AI," says Stephen Messer, AI expert and co-founder of Collective[i], an enterprise AI company designed to optimize revenue growth.

Messer adds that "it's incredible to see them transforming into an AI-first company via their own models," which include Firefly, and integrate with other AI companies including OpenAI.

The stock market will be closed Wednesday

This week is a short one for market participants. As a reminder, Wednesday is a stock market holiday, with both the equities and bond markets closed in observance of Juneteenth.

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With over a decade of experience writing about the stock market, Karee Venema is the senior investing editor at Kiplinger.com. She joined the publication in April 2021 after 10 years of working as an investing writer and columnist at a local investment research firm. In her previous role, Karee focused primarily on options trading, as well as technical, fundamental and sentiment analysis.