The Nasdaq hit a fresh record high Wednesday, underpinned by strength in tech and a falling Treasury yields as signs of further cooling in the labor market lifted hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this year.
At 13:40 ET (17:40 GMT), NASDAQ Composite gained 1.7% to a record intraday high of 17,140.34, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 34 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 climbed 0.9%.
Treasury yields sink on as May Private payrolls miss fuels rate cut bets
Treasury yields continued their stumble this week as rate-cut bets were boosted by data showing the economy created fewer than expected private sector jobs in May, with just 152,000 workers hired in the month, down from 188,000 in the prior month, and missing economists estimates of 173,000.
About 65% of traders expect the Fed to roll out a 25 basis-point reduction in September, compared with odds of below 50% a year earlier, according to CME’s closely-watched FedWatch Tool.
The data comes a day after a separate report showed that job openings slipped to their lowest level in over three years in April.
The slew of U.S. jobs data showing cooling in the labor market comes just ahead of the all-important monthly nonfarm payrolls report due Friday.
Big tech, chips continue rally
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) rose more than 1%, briefly recapturing its $3 trillion market cap, as optimism continues to build ahead of the tech giant’s AI conference next week. Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) were also leading to the upside.
Chips were also involved in the market melt up, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) after Barclays hiked its price target on the chipmaker’s stock to $170 from $150, on optimism that company, which supplies chips to Apple, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), will build on its market share amid growing demand for next generation chips.
Crowdstrike, Hewlett Packard Enterprise shine on earnings stage; Dollar Tree slips after spin-off report
Software consultancy Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) surged 14% after it clocked strong quarterly earnings and presented an optimistic outlook on the back of artificial intelligence demand.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) rallied over 10% after it raised its annual guidance following stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings on strong demand for cloud cybersecurity.,
“We estimate Cloud Security is a ~$500M business for CRWD, putting them near the top of all cloud security vendors both public and private in terms of market share,” UBS said in a Tuesday note.
Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) stock fell 1.5% following a report that the discount retailer plans to explore options that include a potential sale or spin-off of Family Dollar.
Energy stocks steady after recent losses
Energy stocks attempted to arrest their recent slide as oil prices climbed even asU.S. industry data pointing to an unexpected build in U.S. inventories.
U.S. crude inventories jumped by 1.2 million barrels in the week to May 31, confounding estimates for a draw of 2.3 million barrels, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed, but that much less than the American Petroleum Institute report a day earlier showing a build of 4 million barrels.
(Peter Nurse, Ambar Warrick contributed to this article.)
