Wall St ends higher on chip stocks recovery; earnings draw focus

Wall St ends higher on chip stocks recovery; earnings draw focus

By Sinéad Carew and Ragini Mathur

Tue July 21, 2026  

With the recent beating that chip stocks have taken in recent days, today appeared to be the day for all the bargain hunters to come out of the woodwork, pushing all three indexes straight up and way up into significant 3-digit gains. The escalating war took very much a backseat as investors await more AI Q2 earnings, pushing the stocks way up ahead of the actual reporting on the fears that they might miss out.  

Everything remains “priced to perfection” which means if earnings are less than stellar, there will be disappointment and if earnings match the perfect forecasts, they’re already priced in so there’s no where to go. Even after Friday’s huge plunge, today chips are still up 75% for the year. Sentiment today seems to be that the war is transitory due to both the price of oil and the upcoming midterms serving as checks. Volume again remains well below the 19.56 average, closing today at 16.14 billion. 

DJ: 51,839.26  -307.16        NAS: 25,508.07  -12.17         S&P: 7,443.28  -14.41            7/20

DJ: 52,224.64  +385.38       NAS: 25,837.21  +329.13      S&P: 7,509.20  +65.92          7/21

Tue 7-21-26 4:05 pm Wall St ends higher on chip stocks recovery; earnings draw focus | Reuters