Stocks closed higher yesterday with all of the major indexes in the green.

Yesterday morning's PMI Manufacturing Index rose to 52.4 vs. last month's 51.8 and views for 51.9.

And the ISM Manufacturing Index rose to 52.6 vs. last month's 47.9 and estimates for 48.5. This was the first expansion is U.S. manufacturing since early 2025, and was driven by strong new orders and rising production.

Today we'll get the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report (or JOLTS for short).

Earnings season continues. Yesterday, before the open, Disney posted a positive EPS surprise of 3.82%, and a negative sales surprise of -0.03%. That translated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of -7.39% vs. this time last year, and a sales growth of 5.22%. Rising costs and uncertainty over leadership transition weighed on shares. They were down -7.40% yesterday.

After the close we heard from Palantir, which posted a positive EPS surprise of 8.70%, and a positive sales surprise of 4.46%. That equated to a quarterly EPS growth rate of 78.6%, and a sales growth of 70.4%. They also upped their revenue guidance for Q1 by 16.2% above the consensus, and full-year guidance by 15.6% above estimates. They were up 0.80% in the regular session before earnings, and were trading up roughly 8% in after-hours following earnings.

It will be a busy week of earnings this week with another 615 companies on deck to report between today and the rest of the week, including PayPal and Pfizer before the open today, and Advanced Micro Devices, TakeTwo Interactive, and Mondelez after the close.

We'll also hear from 2 more Magnificent 7 stocks this week: Alphabet, when they report on Wednesday, after the close, and Amazon when they go on Thursday, after the close.

In other news, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang reaffirmed his company will invest in OpenAI, but not necessarily at the $100 billion level previously reported on. Nevertheless, he called the planned investment "huge," and said he "believes in Open AI." NVDA was off -2.89% yesterday.

Late in the day yesterday, it was reported that Elon Musk will be combining his xAI company with SpaceX, ahead of the latter's planned IPO. This was speculated upon over the last several weeks. But it now looks closer to being official. This makes sense when you recall that Mr. Musk has said he wants to launch data centers into space to support AI workloads.

Yesterday was day 3 of the partial government shutdown. The passed Senate bills, along with their 2-week continuing resolution (CR) for the Homeland Security bill, were sent back to the House. Hopefully, they can get it passed this week, preferably sooner rather than later, and put an end to the latest shutdown.

Lastly, yesterday afternoon, the White House said they had finally signed a trade deal with India. The deal will see both sides lowering tariffs on each other's goods. India has agreed to "stop buying Russian oil," and will buy "much more from the United States, and potentially Venezuela." India is the 11th largest trading partner for the U.S., with the U.S. exporting roughly $45 billion in goods to India. But the U.S. is India's largest partner, with India exporting nearly $87 billion in goods to the U.S.

Solid start to the week. And the major indexes are within striking distance of new all-time highs.

See you tomorrow,