Tesla Joins US$1trillion Club As Wall Street Rises

While the Dow and S&P hit new highs, the Nasdaq outperformed on the day, buoyed by gains in Tesla and PayPal, and the tech-heavy index stands less than 1 percent away from its September 7 closing record.

Tesla jumped 12.66 percent to its own new high of US$1,045 and breached US$1 trillion in market capitalisation, after car rental firm Hertz placed an order for 100,000 Tesla cars, while Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the stock to US$1,200 from US$900 per share.

"Tesla, there is a lot of the chatter out there today and Hertz placing a big order has created some excitement," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York.

Tesla, which has risen in nine of the past ten sessions and is up more than 28 percent for the month, provided the biggest boost to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. Also helping to lift the two indexes was PayPal, which gained 2.70 percent after the payments company scrapped plans to buy the digital pinboard site Pinterest for as much as US$45 billion. Shares of Pinterest slumped 12.71 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.18 percent, to 35,741, the S&P 500 gained 0.47 percent, to 4,566 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.9 percent, to 15,227.

US President Joe Biden on Monday held out hope for an agreement on his major spending plans before attending a climate summit in Scotland, while the White House said Democratic negotiators were closing in on a deal.

Shares of Facebook were up 1.26 percent ahead of its quarterly results. Investor fears that like Snap, the social media giant's ad revenue could face the brunt of Apple's privacy changes appeared warranted as the social media company warned the rules would weigh on its digital business in the fourth quarter when it reported results after the closing bell. Its shares rose 2.95 percent in extended trade in choppy trading.

Other mega-cap names scheduled to report this week include Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet. (Reuters)