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NASDAQ Rallies on Alphabet and AMD Success
The NASDAQ witnessed a considerable surge on Thursday, propelled by Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD). Their successes injected a renewed sense of optimism about the profound impact of artificial intelligence on the market. Alphabet's shares experienced a 5.3% hike analysts applauded the unveiling of the company's latest AI model. Meanwhile, AMD, which projected a potential market of $45 billion for its data center AI chips this year, saw its shares skyrocket nearly 10%.
Other Tech Stocks Thrive
Simultaneously, numerous other tech-related heavyweight stocks exhibited gains. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) soared over 2%, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) climbed up 1.6%, and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) ascended 1%. Encouraged by beliefs about AI's auspicious future, the Philadelphia semiconductor index shot up 2.8%, taking its 2023 gain to a hefty 48%.
Market Trends
Jay Hatfield, Infrastructure Capital Management's New York-based CEO, contextualized the situation: "Today, it's an AMD-Google rally... Turning into an outbreak that's reverberating throughout the market, making everyone eager to get on board... We're looking at a peculiar market, a seesaw battle of sorts, where tech leads one day, and value and the broader market takes the lead on the following day." Since October ended, the S&P 500 has been on a steady ascent due to notions that the Federal Reserve may have concluded its interest rate hiking spree and could initiate rate cuts as early as March.
The State of the Market
The S&P 500 scaled 0.80% to settle at 4,585.59 points, with index gainers outnumbering losers in an 1.8:1 ratio. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) emerged as the most traded stock in the S&P 500, with $25.7 billion worth of shares in play, registering a 1.37% rise. The Nasdaq Composite bounced 1.37% to 14,339.99 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lifted 0.18% to 36,117.57 points.
Anticipations about the Fed's Decision
Volume on U.S. exchanges was relatively robust, with 11.2 billion shares trading hands, compared to an average of 10.8 billion over the last 20 slides. The market is nearly certain about the Fed maintaining its current level of interest rates in the forthcoming meeting. The Labor Department's jobs report, due on Friday, could provide clues about the pace at which the U.S. economy is moderating and may impact predictions concerning the timing of potential interest rate cuts by the Fed. Non-farm payrolls are projected to have swelled by 180,000 jobs last month after a 150,000 hike in October.
Potential Rate Cut and Market Setbacks
According to the CME Group's (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch tool, futures linked to interest rates suggest an almost 64% possibility of a rate cut as soon as March. In contrast, on the other side of spectrum, a fall of 1.7% in Merck's shares, following a failure of its immunotherapy mixture in a lung cancer study, limited gains in the Dow.
