US Stock Market Today: Wall Street Extends Gains On Strong Tech Boost

The US stock market opened in the green on Thursday, extending gains after strong quarterly earnings by tech giants.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.47% or 90.77 points to open at 22,760.85. The S&P 500 opened 0.31% or 20.55 points higher at 6,691.61. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened 0.26% or 117.97 points up at 46,371.28.

According to Bloomberg reports, "A solid batch of corporate results in the first few days of the US earnings season helped buoy sentiment toward equities, which have also gained on prospects for more Federal Reserve rate cuts". Besides this, AI growth received a sentiment boost from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. after it presented a strong outlook.

As of 8 p.m. IST S&P 500 was trading 0.34% higher, while Dow Jones and Nasdaq traded 0.12% and 0.69% higher respectively.

Salesforce Inc., J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., and Western Digital Corp. were some of the top gainers for the day. Tech giants like Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. also gained, trading 0.65% and 0.25% higher respectively. Scrips of Tesla and Meta Platforms also traded in the green. On the other hand, Apple Inc.'s stock traded 0.85% lower at 247.22

After the markets opened, seven out of the 11 sectoral indices traded in the green with communications and utilities sectors leading the rally, and four traded in the red, with financials and energy sectors leading the decline. The other two sectors trading lower were Healthcare and materials sectors.

As the US market opened, spot gold rose 1.39% to $4,266.09 an ounce. Crude oil prices rose, with the West Texas Intermediate trading 0.09% higher at $58.33 per barrel and Brent Crude trading 0.08% at $61.96 a barrel.

The Bloomberg Dollar Index rose 0.1%, with the British Pound rising 0.2% at $1.3354 while the Japanese yen stayed little changed at 151.18 per dollar.

Bitcoin, the largest traded cryptocurrency, was  little changed at $111,167.22.