By David French
(Reuters) -The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average clung on to end at another record high on Friday, with all three Wall Street indexes scoring weekly gains, as artificial intelligence stocks had enough steam to keep the rally chugging along.
AI poster child Nvidia advanced again and briefly traded above $2 trillion in market valuation for the first time.
Nvidia’s gains on Thursday, the session after its blowout earnings, had propelled AI chipmaker to add $277 billion in stock market value, Wall Street’s largest ever daily gain. Despite smaller gains on the final trading day of the week, its performance still dominated the market’s attention.
“Nvidia is one of the key companies, if not the key company, for driving the Nasdaq and S&P 500 higher,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise.
Saglimbene noted investors have been walking back expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, which otherwise could be a headwind for markets. But the performance of Nvidia and other Big Tech has pushed Fed worries into the background.
“The concentration is so intense right now on Big Tech, in particular on Nvidia, that’s it’s looking passed that,” he said.
Nvidia had pulled up other Big Tech and growth stocks in previous sessions, as investors traded the AI play. Some of these names gave up some gains on Friday, as Apple, Tesla and Meta Platforms all fell.
Shares of Super Micro Computer, another beneficiary of the AI rally, dropped after the server component maker priced its convertible notes.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 2.28 points, or 0.04%, to end at 5,088.78 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 44.80 points, or 0.28%, to 15,996.82. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 60.58 points, or 0.16%, to 39,129.69.
A majority of the S&P sectors were in positive territory. Among the best performers were utilities, which had been the sole laggard the previous day, as well as materials and industrials.
Carvana surged on reporting its first-ever annual profit, helped by its pact with bondholders to cut its outstanding debt by $1 billion.
Warner Bros Discovery slipped on reporting a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss, as the media conglomerate battled the fallout of the twin Hollywood strikes on content generation.
Jack Dorsey-led Block jumped after the payments firm forecast adjusted core earnings for the current quarter above Wall Street estimates, betting on consumer resilience.
(Reporting by Amruta Khandekar and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru and David French in New York; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and David Gregorio)
