What Happened?

A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after stocks extended their rebound, led by strong gains in the technology sector, as renewed optimism surrounding U.S.–China trade negotiations lifted investor sentiment.

Contributing to the bullish tone was a standout earnings report from enterprise software leader ServiceNow, which topped Wall Street's expectations on RPO, profit and earnings. More importantly, the company's remaining performance obligations (RPO), a key forward-looking metric for future revenue, gave investors confidence that enterprise customers were not pulling back spending amidst uncertain macro.

This optimism was further reinforced by solid results from Texas Instruments and Lam Research. Their performance was especially encouraging for semiconductor stocks, which had been under pressure due to their exposure to global trade tensions. These earnings results suggested that, despite macroeconomic uncertainties, demand in key tech verticals remained resilient.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

Zooming In On Zeta (ZETA)

Zeta’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 53 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was a day ago when the stock gained 9.4% on the news that President Trump clarified that he had no intention of removing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a statement that helped calm markets. Earlier remarks had sparked fears of political interference in decision making at the central bank. With Trump walking back his earlier comments, investors likely felt more assured that monetary policy decisions will continue to be guided by data, not drama. That kept the Fed's word credible, and more importantly, gave investors a steadier compass to figure out where rates and the markets were headed next.