Wall Street ended Tuesday at record highs, carried by a small group of chip and tech companies. The S&P 500, the benchmark for the US stock market, rose 0.58% to 7,818.93, its first close above 7,800 and its first record since mid-August. The Nasdaq, which leans harder on tech, closed at a record too, its second in two days.
The chipmakers out front
The push came mostly from chipmakers. Marvell Technology had its best day in a month, up 5.8%, after raising its revenue forecast on the strength of the AI build-out, and Broadcom added 3.7%. AMD gained close to 3% after chief executive Lisa Su told reporters in Taipei the company plans to ramp up chip supply next year.
Then there is Nvidia, the chip designer, which closed at a record of its own. At almost $6 trillion it is now worth more than 8% of the whole S&P 500 on its own, and it has gained almost 5% this month.
A record carried by a few
Strategists have noticed how few names are doing the lifting. Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, global head of equities at UBS, wrote that the breadth of the rally has narrowed, and Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, wrote that a narrow set of leaders is doing more work than the underlying market.
Measures that lean less on the giants have not kept up. A version of the S&P 500 that gives every stock the same weight, so Nvidia counts for no more than the smallest member, sits nearly 5% under the high it set in mid-August. The Dow, the blue-chip index, rose on Tuesday too and still finished about 5% short of its 5 August record.
The good mood did not travel far. On Wednesday morning markets in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul were in the red, and Brent crude was back above $101 a barrel after figures showed Iran had stepped up strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
US earnings season starts next week. Analysts polled by LSEG expect tech companies' profits for July to September to come in about two-thirds higher than a year earlier, and that is the number the giants now have to deliver.
