In what was arguably one of 2020’s starkest days of contrast for markets, technology stocks continued to rip and roar higher on Monday, led once again by many of the largest names in Silicon Valley.
Eight of the 11 stock market sectors actually finished lower for the day, but not the information technology sector, which surged 2.6% over the course of trading.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished essentially flat on the day, up less than 9 points, or less than 0.1%, while the Nasdaq rallied 2.5%, adding 263 points to finish at 10,767.
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Ant IPO … but not in the U.S. The big seemed to get bigger on Monday, and Alibaba (ticker: BABA) was no exception. The Chinese e-commerce giant — which has parlayed its dominance into an enviable portfolio of leading services in finance, ride-sharing, cloud computing and other high-growth industries — took a 33% stake in Ant Group in 2018.
At the time, the parent company of online payments company Alipay was considered one of the hottest private-market investments in fintech. In 2020, little has changed, and Ant Group is reportedly seeking to publicly list shares on two Chinese and Hong Kong-based exchanges, bypassing the U.S. market entirely.
By that time, the go-public valuation may exceed $200 billion.
Amazon, Tesla soar. As two of the Nasdaq’s largest components, it didn’t hurt that Amazon ( AMZN) and Tesla ( TSLA) each soared on Monday. Amazon jumped 7.9% and Tesla shares jumped 9.5%.
There was little in the way of news that backed up the one-day rallies (particularly when it comes to Tesla shares), but Amazon did see a major price target hike from one analyst. MKM Partners’ Rohit Kulkarni boosted his price target on shares to $3,350 from $2,525, saying the company’s dual strengths of e-commerce and cloud computing were perfectly tailored for trends accelerating throughout the pandemic.
Prominent market commentator Jim Cramer tweeted that moves in Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft ( MSFT), the last of which rose 4.3% Monday, were “truly insane” and unlike any that he’d seen before.
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Tech Stocks on Fire, Ant Group IPO originally appeared on usnews.com
