Stocks slowed their advance Monday but still rose just enough to log their fifth straight day of gains, as investors turned cautious a day before Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) kicks off technology sector earnings reports.
Intel added 1.6 percent ahead of its quarterly results. Analysts are expecting big sales growth from Intel, up 27.7 percent from the year-ago quarter to $10.25 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Earnings are expected to come in at 43 cents a share, and Intel is projected to log 22.5 percent sales growth this year.
Analysts will be on alert for any signs from Intel that European credit turmoil and persistently high unemployment in the U.S. are hurting the strong recovery in chip demand.
The Nasdaq added just 0.1 percent on the day, but a number of tech stocks gained 2 percent or more, including Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) and SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK).
Qualcomm and SanDisk benefited from upbeat analyst comments.
AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will report their quarterly results on Thursday.