NEW YORK (AP) — A rebound for technology stocks led Wall Street to records Wednesday, even though the majority of U.S. stocks fell following another discouraging update on inflation.
The S&P 500 rose 0.6% and topped its prior all-time high set at the start of the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 67 points, or 0.1%, while the Nasdaq composite set its own record after climbing 1.2%.
Gains for tech stocks led the way, like Micron Technology’s 4.8% and On Semiconductor’s 11.1%. They had stumbled the day before after momentum suddenly halted for stocks riding excitement around artificial-intelligence technology.
Nvidia, the chip company that was among the first faces of the AI boom, rose 2.3% and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500 because of its immense size. Its CEO, Jensen Huang, got an invitation to join President Donald Trump on his trip to China, where they could discuss allowing shipments of Nvidia AI chips to the world’s second-largest economy.
Earlier in the day, Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. said that its profit for the 12 months through March zoomed by nearly five-fold from the previous year as its AI investments paid off. China’s Alibaba Group said its AI and cloud growth accelerated in the latest quarter, and its stock that trades in the United States rose 8.2% even though its overall results fell short of analysts’ expectations.
