The stock market enjoyed a big bull market on Monday, and the Nasdaq helped lead the way. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -2.05%) index climbed more than 2%, and the Nasdaq 100's gains amounted to 2.5% by the end of the day.
The name of the game for Nasdaq investors in 2020 has been momentum, as winning stocks have tended to keep winning. That's the case for Amazon.com (AMZN -2.56%), whose stock hit $3,000 per share for the first time ever on Monday. In addition, high-flying electric vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA -1.92%) continued to advance to new heights, as more stock analysts jumped on board in affirming the company's promising prospects.
One-and-a-half trillion reasons for investors to be happy
Amazon's stock climbed almost 6% on Monday. That was enough to lift the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant above $1.5 trillion in market capitalization. While that still doesn't put it in first place, it shows just how optimistic investors are about its future.
Much of the basis for the stock market's advance today came from upbeat economic news from China. Investors there hope that because the country has done a better job of containing the COVID-19 pandemic than many other countries, the Chinese economy will be able to sustain a stronger pace of expansion and get back to its past growth rates.
Image source: Amazon.com.
A strong China is good for Amazon, as the health of many of the sellers that use its marketplace platform relies on access to cheap goods from the world's second-largest economy. Amazon is also benefiting from the shift toward cloud computing, which is resulting in large part from the surge in e-commerce and the need for businesses to have a substantial online presence.
With Amazon trading above $3,000 per share, some analysts worry that the stock could be ahead of itself. Yet that's been true for much of Amazon's history, and the share price has continued to move steadily higher year after year.
Tesla gets yet another upgrade
Elsewhere, Tesla's stock climbed even more steeply, finishing the day with a 13% rise. That took the share price above $1,370. The pace of Tesla's ascent is making even the most aggressive analyst calls look tame.
Today, Tesla investors were buoyed by positive comments on the stock from analysts at JMP Securities. JMP boosted its price target by $450 to $1,500 per share, citing last week's news of strong vehicle deliveries during the second quarter. Even with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic imposed, Tesla still saw strong demand for its cars and SUVs. Moreover, JMP believes that Tesla's production will only ramp up further as new models come to market.
Even those who think Tesla's success is temporary have started to capitulate. At JPMorgan, analysts raised their price target by $20 per share to $295. As low as that number might seem, it merely matches what the stock fetched as recently as last October.
Investors like what they're seeing from the Nasdaq's top stocks, and it's sending the entire market higher. How long that will continue is anyone's guess, but for now, the momentum is all pointing to further gains.
