By Sabrina Escobar | Thursday, April 24

Charging On. Markets extended their rally Thursday as investors snapped up hard-hit technology stocks, helping boost the S&P 500 out of correction territory.

The S&P 500 closed 2% higher Thursday to about 5,485. That marks a 10% rise from the index's low on April 8, signifying the end of the correction that began in March. 

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed 2.7% higher on the day, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 487 points, or 1.2%. 

"The recovery, which started Tuesday, feels good, but no one is ready to say with confidence that the bottom is in," wrote Louis Navellier, chief investment officer at Navellier. 

Alphabet's earnings, released this afternoon, might help keep the good vibes going heading into Friday (although volatility has been the name of the game lately). Shares of Alphabet were trading roughly 5% higher in the after-hours session tonight following the company's earnings beat.

Intel, which also reported results late Thursday, topped expectations as well, but the stock was lower on a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter. The chip maker blamed tariffs. 

“The current macro environment is creating elevated uncertainty across the industry, which is reflected in our outlook,” Intel CFO David Zinsner said in the press release.

Indeed, providing forecasts for the remainder of the year seems to be the biggest challenge for companies this earnings season, given the fluctuating nature of tariff implementation. Many companies have chosen to cut full-year guidance, like Intel did, or scrap it altogether, like American Airlines and Southwest Airlines.

Those that have maintained their outlook have said that trade policy is too volatile for them to make new projections. It's an approach many companies that haven't yet reported are likely to take.

“I would expect most of these companies to try to kick the can down the road and say, ‘We don’t know—we haven’t seen anything yet—let’s see what happens,’” D.A. Davidson tech analyst Gil Luria told my colleague Angela Palumbo.

Forecasts aside, earnings season overall has been generally positive--at least when it comes to fundamentals. As of Thursday morning, about 26% of the S&P 500 had reported first-quarter results. Some 80% of those companies have exceeded earnings estimates, while 64% bested revenue estimates, according to Fundstrat data.  

DJIA: +1.23% to 40,093.40
S&P 500: +2.03% to 5,484.77
Nasdaq: +2.74% to 17,166.04

The Hot Stock: ServiceNow +15.5%
The Biggest Loser: Fiserv -18.5%

Best Sector: Technology +3.7%
Worst Sector: Consumer Staples -0.9%

All That Glitters...

Gold is having a moment. The precious metal has been hovering around record highs in the past few months. While prices dipped on Wednesday, they gained ground again on Thursday, up 2% to $3,361.30. In the past 12 months, gold prices have jumped a whopping 43%. 

My colleague Jack Hough notes that the metal's price increase stems from "ravenous and broad" demand that has been surging since 2022, when the U.S. and its allies placed sanctions on Russia and China went on a bullion shopping spree. Other central banks have since stepped into the gold market as China's buying cooled -- a move that Jack says is unsurprising given that finance ministers have been diversifying away from the U.S. dollar for decades. 

Individual investors are also piling in. There is now an estimated $4 trillion worth of gold held by central banks, and $5 trillion by private investors, for a record global portfolio allocation of 3.5%. 

Jack writes:

The recent uptick in gold stockpiling looks to JPMorgan Chase, the world’s largest bullion dealer, like a debasement trade. Investors are nervous about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his browbeating of the Federal Reserve Chairman over interest rates, and blowout U.S. deficits.

The run-up has been great for gold bugs. But Jack warns that while prices aren't likely to plummet anytime soon, investors should be wary of over-indexing the metal -- and should "resist fleeing stocks for gold." The metal has been a so-so inflation hedge in the past half-century, and it doesn't always offset stock declines. 

His advice? 

Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn’t. People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable. Use bonds as a stock market hedge. If they don’t work, fall back to patience. For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week. A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains. Treasury inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.

Own a house. Stick with a workaday, reliable car. Yes, cars deteriorate. But so does nearly everything on a long enough timeline. Rely mostly on stocks, which represent businesses, which wouldn’t endure if they couldn’t turn raw inputs like commodities into something more profitable. There’s even a miner, Newmont, in the S&P 500.

Read Jack's full cover story here.