Back in Black. What tech gives it can also take away, but luckily the sector bolstered the market today, rather than weighing it down.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7% while the S&P 500 rose 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.3%.

Markets were rattled on Monday by fears of a prolonged Iran War. Even though oil prices climbed to their highest point in over a month on Tuesday , Wall Street had little time for geopolitical worries once the AI trade picked up again. Semiconductor stocks logged their best day in a month. That may be part rebound, or part anticipation of earnings results scheduled for tomorrow from Tesla and Google parent Alphabet, the first two of the Magnificent Seven up to bat.

Overall, traders "shrugged off the news from the War in favor of buying the chip makers again, presumably on the hope that the AI hyperscalers, when they report second-quarter earnings over the next few days, will also report large capital spending plans," wrote Macquarie Strategist Thierry Wizman.

The deck is stacked with even more tech earnings next week, with Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Amazon.com all reporting in quick succession. That means that that the question of whether Tuesday's market bump was the start of a lasting rebound, or false hope, likely won't be answered until the biggest players have their say.

The Hot Stock: Sandisk Corporation +14.3% The Biggest Loser: Danaher Corporation -11%

Best Sector: Information Technology +2.4% Worst Sector: Consumer Staples -1%

Class Act?

It's only mid-July, but back-to-school shopping season is already kicking off. Deloitte's recently released 2026 Back-to-School Survey found that spending is expected to peak later this month and into early August as parents delay purchases until closer to the start of school .

They won't be the only ones shopping, however. A study by PwC found that 61% of parents plan to allow their children -- ranging in age from pre-K to high schoolers -- to add items directly into online carts, "turning the back-to-school season into a collaborative purchasing journey," as the firm puts it.

There may be another collaborator in the mix during these joint online shopping activities: AI. Agentic tools are going to provide the next leg up for e-commerce growth, write a group of analysts from Morgan Stanley. Their modeling predicts AI-assisted shopping will be a $7 trillion eCommerce opportunity by 2030, with a 9% compound annual growth rate--up from 7% in the period spanning 2021 to 2025. They expect that gross merchandise value of online sales will account for 27% of retail sales in 2030, up from 22% in 2025, as agentic tools lead to more purchases and more repeat purchases, "particularly as consumers move from AI-assisted discovery toward more automated purchase[s]."

Although plenty of retailers have already rolled out AI tools, lots of questions remain. Will it be a great equalizer for the retail ecosystem, with algorithms finding the best products for consumers from little-known brands? Or will it be another way for the big retailers to get even bigger, because they have the deepest pockets to invest in the technology? For now, humans are still making the final call, but what happens when that decision is handed over to bots, as Morgan Stanley suggests -- will that make marketing obsolete?

When I was a student, the greatest back-to-school question on my mind what which Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper to choose. Simpler times.

The Calendar

Alphabet, AT&T, AvalonBay Communities, CME Group, Crown Castle, CSX Corp, Equity Residential, GE Vernova, IBM, Globe Life, Moody's Corp, Northern Trust Corp, Otis Worldwide, Packaging Corp of America, Philip Morris International, PulteGroup, Raymond James Financial, Rollins, Southwest Airlines, ServiceNow, Texas Instruments, Tesla, and Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies report earnings tomorrow.

What We're Reading Today

   -- Retirees Need $185,500 Just for Medical Bills 
 
   -- Northrop Has a Problem: It's a Defense Stock 
 
   -- What Tesla Desperately Needs 
 
   -- Why Nvidia Stock Can 'Lead the Charge' This Earnings Season 

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July 21, 2026 19:55 ET (23:55 GMT)

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