Wall Street finished Tuesday on an upbeat note, with stocks posting muted gains. Investors are still bracing for bigger market-moving news later this week.

Tech stocks climbed, with the Nasdaq composite leading gains. The tech-heavy index gained 0.7%, followed by the Dow industrials and S&P 500, which both added 0.3%. The Dow industrials have posted gains in four of the past five sessions. Tuesday's came on the second lowest volume day of the year.

Offering a boost: Oil prices and bond yields retreated. Brent crude futures finished the day 3.9% lower at $88.58 a barrel, while the 10-year Treasury yield slipped to 4.638%, notching its largest one-day decline since June 24.

Some investors said trading was quiet ahead of three "driving factors" to come-July's personal-consumption expenditures index Wednesday morning, Nvidia earnings after the bell and Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh's remarks at the Fed's Jackson Hole symposium Friday.

"There are a lot of moving pieces all moving at the same time. And that's the challenge in teasing out how much each one of these individually is impacting the market itself," said Warren Hurt, chief investment officer at F&M Trust.

Hurt said other "clouds on the horizon," namely blown-up tariff discussions with Canada and conflict in Iran, aren't having much effect on markets because earnings have held strong.

Ottawa on Tuesday morning unveiled tariffs of 15%-50% on about $20 billion of American goods targeting steel, dairy, appliances and farm equipment, while President Trump threatened to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

Canadian banking heavyweights Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal largely played down tariff concerns on their earnings calls. "There is uncertainty, but it does feel like a manageable force to get through," said Scotiabank Chief Executive Scott Thomson.

Dick's Sporting Goods posted its largest decrease on record in data going back to 2002, losing almost one-third of its value after lowering parts of its outlook, citing industrywide challenges that weighed on its Foot Locker business.

In the Middle East, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's promised "economic D-Day" hasn't triggered the global domino of pain investors feared it could have. Notably, the measures announced stopped short of directly penalizing China, the main buyer of Iranian oil, a move that would have risked stoking tensions between the world's two biggest economies.

Meanwhile, Stanley Druckenmiller, Bessent's longtime mentor, sounded off on the Treasury secretary over intervention to bring down borrowing costs, calling it a mistake.