The S&P 500 Index clocked its best day in a month on Thursday as investors weighed remarks from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, who offered optimism that inflation is showing some signs of slowing. Traders accordingly pared bets for interest-rate hikes in September.
The benchmark equities gauge jumped 1.1% after Waller's comments. He said, earlier in the day, that his next decision on interest rates will be "heavily influenced" by August inflation data due next week. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index advanced 1.2%, its biggest gain in a week, even as chip stocks were mostly subdued following Broadcom Inc.'s earnings.
Broadcom shares fell 2.7% after the chipmaker's results and forecast were seen as underwhelming, even as it predicted a boom in artificial intelligence chip sales over the next two years. An exchange-traded fund tracking chip names rose modestly after declining as much as 2.4% earlier. Nvidia Corp. climbed 1.8% after agreeing to acquire artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face in a transaction valued at about $13 billion.
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"It is safe to conclude that the AI data-center boom persists," said Louis Navellier, chief investment officer at Navellier & Associates. "As the fall arrives and the weather cools, I expect that the stock market will heat up, since another round of record earnings is expected to be announced."
Among single-stock movers, Snowflake Inc. rallied 17%, its best day since late May, after the software company's quarterly results beat expectations and it raised its full-year forecast for product revenue. Robinhood - the best S&P 500 performer on Thursday - rallied nearly 17% after capturing a number of analyst upgrades in recent days.
| Investors are gearing up for Friday's jobs report for clues on the Fed's path for interest rates. Economists estimate that the employment report, due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington on Friday, will show US employers added 55,000 jobs in August. Such a result would be broadly in-line with average job growth this year. The S&P 500 is projected to swing just 0.7% in either direction on Friday, in line with the average realized move on jobs-report days over the past 12 months, options-market data compiled by Citigroup Inc. show. Stuart Kaiser, the firm's head of US equity trading strategy, says Friday's implied move, based on prices of S&P 500 option straddles as of Tuesday's close, is too low. Data released Thursday showed initial jobless claims for the period through Aug. 29 were broadly in line with estimates. Meanwhile, the US service sector expanded in August by the most in six months, bolstered by strong demand and a pickup in business activity. ALSO READ: NVIDIA To Acquire Hugging Face For $12.93 Billion As Open Model Race Heats Up Nine of the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 rose on Thursday, led by gains in consumer discretionary, financials and communication services while energy, materials and staples fell. Wall Street's chief fear gauge - the Cboe Volatility Index remained around 14 - a level that doesn't typically signal market stress, and was more than 20% below its one-year average. Energy shares were the biggest decliners in the S&P 500, falling 0.7% as US oil prices were flat after briefly topping $93, marking the latest bout of volatility for crude prices, which have swung sharply as the US and Iran intensified tit-for-tat military strikes in recent days. Elsewhere, Tesla Inc. outperformed its Magnificent Seven peers, climbing nearly 5.4%, with the electric-vehicle maker set to host a Cybercab event in Austin. Meta Platforms Inc. rose 3% after the social-media giant released its most powerful AI model yet. NetApp Inc. rose about 2.5% after the data storage and management company reported first-quarter results that beat expectations and raised its full-year forecast. The stock has been a strong performer this year, up more than 70% in 2026. |
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