Stock markets rose on Friday with the S&P 500 index hitting yet another record, as tech stocks gained ahead of some major earnings news next week. The three key indices all rose, overcoming growing concern about COVID-19 variants and how that may impact economic recovery. Those gains came after kicking off the week in the red, after the Dow was down more than 700 points on Monday.

Equity investors dove back into the market to close the week; the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 238 points, or 0.68%, to 35,062.41, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed 1% each, sending all major averages to new records.

Next week, investors can expect the latest earnings reports from major U.S. tech companies, such as Tesla, Google, and Microsoft, while tracking news of the COVID-19 delta variant and how that may impact the return to work for many companies this fall.

Here are the returns for major asset classes and Bitcoin, so far this year.

Events Calendar:

Monday July 26:

• Tesla Inc. (TSLA) Reports Earnings
• German Ifo Business Climate Index (July).
• U.S. New Home Sales (June).

Tuesday July 27:

• Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), GE Corp. (GE), Microsoft Inc. (MSFT), Apple Inc. (AAPL), and AMD Inc. (AMD) Report Earnings.
• U.S. Core Durable Good Orders (June)
• U.S. S&P/CS Home Price Index Composite (May).
• U.S. Conference Board Consumer Confidence (July)

Wednesday July 28:

Thursday July 29:

• Amazon Inc. (AMZN) Reports Earnings.
• German Unemployment Rate (July).
• U.S. Pending Home Sales (June).
• Japanese Retail (June).

Friday July 30:

• ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM) Reports Quarterly Earnings.
• French Consumer Spending (June).
• French Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Q2).
• U.K. House Price Index (HPI) (July).
• German GDP (Q2)
• Eurozone Unemployment Rate (June).
• U.S. Core Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) (June)
• U.S. Chicago Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) (June).
• U.S. University of Michigan Consumer Expectations and Sentiment (July)
• Chinese Manufacturing and Composite PMIs (July).

Events Next Week

Next week is jam-packed with earnings as major companies across sectors of the economy report quarterly earnings. Electric-car manufacturer Tesla reports earnings after the bell this Monday. One thing to keep an eye on are the sizable recalls that Tesla had to start toward the end of the last quarter, and it’s unclear exactly how much that may affect its bottom line.

The biggest news will likely be the five tech titans, which all report this upcoming week. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple all report Tuesday, Facebook reports on Wednesday, and Amazon reports Thursday.

Fierce competition in the cloud computing market means Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft’s Azure, are all competing for the same lucrative and quickly growing market, which also makes up a disproportionate section of profit and revenue growth in all three companies.

They’re also facing mounting pressure from a number of antitrust issues, especially with the appointment of new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, who has expressed past criticism of some tech business practices. The growing number of lawsuits and the movement of six major antitrust bills through Congress are also major issues that may be significant to investors watching the tech space.

FOMC Meeting

The U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announces interest rate and monetary policy decisions this Thursday. Few expect they won’t change interest rates, but it’s not known if the Fed will lower the rate at which it is purchasing bonds, a process called “tapering.” This means it will begin less accommodating monetary policy by injecting less money into the economy. The Fed’s main measure of inflation, the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, has been significantly over its preferred 2% target, coming in at 3.1% and 3.4% in April and May, respectively. Normally, when inflation moves above the Fed’s threshold, it makes monetary policy more restrictive.