The Dow Jones gained over 600 points, more than half of the 1,100-point fall on Wednesday. The S&P 500 rose 1.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.7%. Both the tech-led indices recovered everything that they lost on Wednesday and a little more. The Nasdaq 100 index, which had slipped into a “technical correction” on Wednesday, surged nearly 3.5%.
Nearly every chip stock, barring Nvidia, saw double-digit gains on Thursday. Nvidia itself rose 2.5%. However, its peers, AMD, Intel, Micron, gained between 11% to 18%, the SK Hynix ADR gained 18%, while shares of Sandisk were up 26% overnight.
The chip stocks were buoyed by results of Microsoft, whose 15% rally on Thursday turned out to be the best single-day gain for the stock since October 2008. The company added nearly $450 billion in market capitalisation on Thursday, making it the most by any stock in a single-day in history, eclipsing Nvidia’s $440 billion addition after US President Donald Trump had announced his first tariff pause back in April 2025.
Software stocks sold-off overnight as a result of the rally in chip names. Shares of Salesforce, Adobe, Accenture, Cognizant, all fell between 4% to 6% on Thursday. The US-listed Infosys ADR also fell over 5% overnight. The Indian entity has rallied 11% so far this week.
The rally on Wall Street brushed aside every piece of macro data that was reported during the day. The second quarter GDP figure stood at 1.5% for the US economy, lower than the estimates of 1.8% and also lower than the 2.1% figure reported during the first quarter.
Additionally, the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) inflation figure, which is also the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 3.7% year-on-year in June, in-line with expectations, while the Core PCE also rose 3.3% from last year, also in-line with what economists had projected. However, both figures remained well above the Fed’s 2% target.The market also ignored the fact that bond markets continue to trade at elevated levels with the 10-year yield hovering around the highest since 2025, while the 30-year yield remaining at the highest since 2007.
Exxon, Chevron, AbbVie, Linde Plc will be reporting their results today, along with the consumer sentiment data.
