The Nasdaq led US stocks higher on Thursday as investors weighed AI chipmaker Nvidia’s earnings report and took stock of President Trump's latest tariff pledges.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) moved up roughly 0.7%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) added 0.5% after both indexes eked out closing gains on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.1%
Investors are digging into Nvidia's quarterly earnings beat, which signaled plenty of scope for growth as it eased worries about DeepSeek and faltering AI demand. The results initially met a muted response as its profit outlook raised doubts on Wall Street, but Nvidia's stock was roughly 3% in early trading to recover from an earlier pullback.
Meanwhile, eyes were on the latest escalation of President Trump's tariff threats after he said in a social media post that levies against Mexico and Canada will go into effect as scheduled on March 4. This follows the President's pledge on Wednesday to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union.
43,614.57
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As of 9:50:33 AM EST. Market Open.
^DJI ^GSPC ^IXIC
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) prices — seen by some as a gauge of faith in Trump — continued to pull back from a post-election peak, falling 2%. But the cryptocurrency pared earlier overnight losses that saw it drop below $85,000 to hit its lowest point since November.
The US economy grew at an unrevised 2.3% annualized pace last quarter, on par with consensus estimates. Meanwhile weekly initial jobless claims jumped to 242,000, higher than the 221,000 expected by economists in a sign of a softening labor market.
Friday's release of the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index will be the next data point investors will focus on for economic clues as the path to interest rate cuts is seen as increasingly uncertain.
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