Finance

Shares of Amazon surged to a fresh record high, officially pushing the e-commerce and cloud giant past a three trillion dollar market capitalization. The stock's continuous upward momentum follows a better-than-expected second-quarter earnings report. Investors were encouraged by robust artificial intelligence demand driving cloud-computing growth.

Economic indicators showed resilient growth as the ISM manufacturing index climbed to 55.6 in July, remaining firmly in expansion territory and beating consensus estimates. Concurrently, domestic consumer sentiment figures marked an upward trend. Financial markets are closely parsing this data ahead of critical labor market reports scheduled for later in the week.

Precious metals moved higher, with spot gold climbing above $4,050 per ounce as the U.S. dollar softened. Bullion found support from a historical inverse correlation returning to play as Brent crude plummeted over 5% and WTI crude fell below $80 per barrel. The drop in energy prices diminished near-term rate hike expectations, boosting the appeal of non-yielding assets.