Yahoo TV

STORY: The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 clung onto gains to close higher on Tuesday, extending recent winning streaks fueled by renewed expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year.

Those two indexes each finished up about one tenth of one percent while the Nasdaq fell one tenth.

The Dow rose for the fifth straight session, it’s longest winning streak since December.

This despite a nine-and-one-half percent decline for Dow stock Disney after as a surprise profit in its streaming entertainment division was eclipsed by a drop in its traditional TV business and weaker box office.

Corporate earnings overall though are coming in stronger than forecast which is one reason why Sanctuary Wealth Chief Investment Strategist Mary Ann Bartels is bullish on stocks.

“Well, for the equity market, the most important factor for the direction of stocks is earnings. And we're right in the middle of earnings and earnings are coming in significantly better than expected, at least by 1% better. And that's important. Also profit margins have been stable and look to grow. But what's also helped the equity markets is that Fed Chair Powell said that the Fed was not going to raise interest rates because there's been a concern of higher interests and there's been a concern about inflation and that seems to be ebbing. So with no rate hike, at least stable inflation, earnings is really taking center stage and really driving the equity market right now.”

Others stocks on the move included Nvidia which fell about two percent after the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was developing its own chip to run artificial intelligence software in data centers.

And shares of Palantir Technologies tumbled 15% after the data analytics firm's annual revenue forecast fell short of analysts' estimates.