US stocks end slightly higher ahead of Nvidia results

STORY: U.S. stocks ended with slight gains on Tuesday - but enough to once again push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record closing highs.

The Dow gained just under two-tenths of a percent, the S&P added a quarter-percent and the Nasdaq gained nearly a quarter-percent.

Investor focus this week is largely on Nvidia, Wall Street's third-largest firm by market capitalization, which reports earnings after Wednesday's closing bell. Expectations are for another blowout quarter for the chipmaker, which could be a significant market catalyst and test whether the outsized rally in AI-related stocks can be sustained.

But Shana Orczyk Sissel, CEO of Banríon Capital Management, says that at more than $950 a share, strong earnings might actually prompt some investors to sell.

"We're getting really close to that $1000 per share number and, psychologically, people fixate on numbers like that. So, will we see some selling if the stock does reach that $1000 per share market price? It would be interesting to see how investor behavior reacts just to that psychological milestone."

Investors are also waiting for minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent policy meeting, due on Wednesday, after multiple Fed officials on Tuesday reiterated that it would be best to exercise patience before starting to cut interest rates.

Stocks on the move included AutoZone, which dropped 3.5% after the auto parts retailer reported a third-quarter sales miss.

Shares of Macy's jumped more than 5% after the department store operator raised its annual profit forecast, despite posting a bigger-than-expected drop in sales for the first quarter.

And shares of IBM gained more than 2% on plans to release a family of artificial-intelligence models as open-source software and help Saudi Arabia train an AI system in Arabic.