S&P 500, Nasdaq Hit Record Highs as Tech Bulls March On

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at all-time highs Monday as tech made a strong start to the week despite some on Wall Street warning of a hawkish surprise from the Federal Reserve later this week.

The S&P 500 rose 0.18%, to close at a record high of 4,255.15. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.25%, or 85 points, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.74% to close a record high of 14,174.14.

The Federal Open Market Committee kicks off its two-day meeting on Tuesday, against fresh worries that the central bank could be behind the curve on inflation.

"Given the shift in the mix of inflation from transitory towards sustainable, the risk of a hawkish tilt within the FOMC has increased," Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) said in a note.

The fall in rates leading up to the FOMC meeting suggests investors are dismissing inflation as transitory, just "at the time when the sustainability of inflation looks more viable," Morgan Stanley added.

Treasury yields ended higher on the day, but that didn't spell doom and gloom for highly-valued technology stocks, which tend to be less attractive in rising rate environments.

Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL),

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) traded sharply higher.

Cyclicals including industrials, energy, and financials were not having a good day.

Financials slipped more than 1%, paced by a drop in banking stocks after JPMorgan's chief executive Jamie Dimon warned the that pandemic-led boom in trading revenue for JPMorgan could be nearing an end.

Fixed-income trading revenue JPMorgan will be just above $6 billion in the second quarter, Dimon said Monday at a Morgan Stanley virtual conference.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) were down more than 1%.

Energy, meanwhile, failed to capitalize on a jump in oil prices toward 32-month highs amid losses in Baker Hughes (NYSE:BKR), Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB) and Hess (NYSE:HES).

In other news, Lordstown Motors (NASDAQ:RIDE) fell 19% after Steve Burns and Julio Rodriguez resigned as the company's chief executive officer and chief financial officer, respectively.