On Wednesday, I suggested that the rest of the week should be calm. Maybe I jinxed the market in a bullish way. Stocks rallied broadly on Thursday.
The Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) rose 1.3% as of 1:29 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) climbed 1.1%, and the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) added 1%. All three indexes are now slightly up from last Thursday’s closing scores. Yesterday, they seemed destined for a down week.
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SpaceX and Tesla powered the Nasdaq’s 1.3% gain
The biggest single push behind the Nasdaq Composite came from Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), up 7.8% and worth 0.29 percentage points of the index move on its own. Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) followed with a 7% jump, good for another 0.19 points. Tesla is unveiling a two-seat robotaxi at a Cybercab event in Austin after the close tonight, and SpaceX went along for the ride on the strength of a shared chief executive.
The Dow told a different story. Goldman Sachs rose 3.1%, contributing 179 Dow points, or roughly 30% of the entire index gain. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Travelers each added 2.7%. Microsoft is restructuring to a simpler two-segment reporting structure. The biggest Dow contributor didn’t announce anything, but the overall vibe is clearly bullish. 25 of the 30 Dow stocks are higher right now.
Then there’s Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which generated the loudest headline of the day but one of the quieter stock moves. Rumor evolved into real news as Nvidia announced a $12.9 billion bid for AI platform Hugging Face. The stock rose 1.3%, adding roughly $73 billion to Nvidia’s market value. Rumors of the same deal moved Nvidia 3.8% higher yesterday, so the official version was worth about a third of the speculation (but still several times Hugging Face’s price tag).
Semiconductors skipped the party
Chip stocks are generally sitting out today’s market exuberance.
Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) fell 3.6% after guiding fourth-quarter revenue to $34.8 billion against a $35.0 billion consensus. CEO Hock Tan also issued robust revenue guidance for the next two years, but Wall Street didn’t seem to care.
Micron Technology and SK Hynix both slipped about 1.5%, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF finished slightly negative. The hardware sector caught a cold from Broadcom’s sneeze.
