by On Thursday, Wall Street closed sharply higher, thanks to gains in technology-related stocks like Nvidia.
Meanwhile, investors had shifted their focus on the speech of Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman, on Friday in Jackson Hole for clues about the policy outlook of the central bank.
Looking for clues
The chairman of the Federal Reserve will give a speech at the symposium on Friday that will be dissected by investors for hints about how aggressive the central bank would be in its fight against inflation.
Market analysts said that the markets were not very volatile, but there was some activity, as the corporate earnings season comes to an end and eyes are turned toward the Fed.
The US Treasury yields had recently hit a high of two months, but they faded because of the uncertainty about Fed’s movements.
A fall in interest rate is usually beneficial for technology stocks that have high valuations. Analysts said that growth-oriented sectors had to seem to support lower interest rates.
Stock movements
There was a 4% rise in Nvidia, after the quarterly forecast of the graphics chipmaker was weaker than expected.
Many investors believe that this indicates that the company may have put its worst sales downturn behind it. This resulted in a rally recorded in the Philadelphia semiconductor index.
There was a more than 1% gain in Microsoft and Apple, while a more than 2% gain was recorded in Google-owner Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com.
All four companies ended up making major contributions to the increase in the Nasdaq Composite for the day.
There was a rise in all 11 sectors of the S&P 500 index, with materials leading the race with a gain of 2.6% and communication services coming in second with a gain of 2.06%.
Economic data
Earlier in the day, data showed that there was a less-than-believed contraction in the US economy in the second quarter.
This helped clear some fears about an economic recession, but increased bets of the Federal Reserve hiking the interest rate by another 75 basis points in its policy meeting in the next month.
On Thursday, the US central bank officials were mostly noncommittal about the pace and size of the hike in interest rate in its meeting in September.
However, they did mention that hikes could be expected for as long as inflation does not come back down to the Fed’s target.
There was a 0.35% drop recorded in Tesla Inc. after the company’s stock split went into effect. There was a 1.41% gain in the S&P 500 index, as it closed for the day at 4,199.12 points.
As for the Nasdaq Composite, it climbed by 1.67% to reach 12,639.27 points, while a 0.98% rise was also seen in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to reach 33,291.78 points.
After the rally on Thursday, the S&P 500 index was still down by 12% and the Nasdaq was down by 19% for the year.
There was a 2.1% rise in Citigroup Inc., after its announcement of closing down its commercial and consumer banking business in Russia.
