Megacaps rally pushes S&P 500 to first close above 5,000 milestone

S&P 500 closed above 5,000 for the first time on Friday and Nasdaq briefly traded above 16,000, with boosts from megacaps and chip stocks, including Nvidia as investors bet on artificial intelligence technology and eyed strong earnings data.

Nvidia (NVDA.O), finished up 3.6% and hit a record high after Reuters reported it was building a new business unit focused on designing bespoke chips for cloud computing firms and others, including advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors.

This was after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman was in talks with investors to raise funds for a tech initiative, opens new tab intended to boost chip-building capacity for power AI, among other things.

“The AI story so far has been all about building the infrastructure, the chips, the data centers,” said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management, adding that the report “at least underscores that there’s potentially a tremendous amount of demand going forward for AI infrastructure.”

 

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