US stocks gain with Nvidia and Fed meeting in focus

WALL STREET’S three major indexes closed higher on Tuesday after shares in hotshot chipmaker Nvidia shook off early losses and investors looked ahead to the US Federal Reserve’s policy meeting conclusion on Wednesday for clues on interest rate policy.

Shares in Nvidia pulled out of the red to close up 1% after it revealed pricing and shipment plans for its hotly anticipated Blackwell B200 artificial intelligence (AI) chip, which it says could be 30 times faster than current chips.

Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles attributed Tuesday’s overall gains to improving sentiment after Nvidia’s shares turned around along with ongoing bullishness about the economy’s direction.

“You’re continuing to see money go into the market and not just technology,” said Mr. James. “It certainly helps when you’re seeing the large cap tech names today like Nvidia show relative strength from where they opened. But it’s continuing the overall bullish theme that’s been going on since the year started.”

At 04:15 p.m., the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 320.33 points or 0.83% to 39,110.76; the S&P 500 gained 29.09 points or 0.56% to 5,178.51; and the Nasdaq Composite gained 63.34 points or 0.39% to 16,166.79.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average outpaced its Wall Street peers, supported by a 2% gains in Home Depot and advances of more than 1% in both McDonald’s and Apple, Inc.

In the S&P 500’s 11 major industry sectors only communications services lost ground and that ended down just 0.2% after an almost 3% rally on Monday.

Energy led gains, rising 1.1% as oil prices rose.

Investors were preparing a day ahead of the Fed’s policy update, including a press conference from Chair Jerome Powell. Robust inflation data has pulled back bets for the first rate cut in June to about 59% from about 69% at the start of last week, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

But, Gene Goldman, chief investment officer at Cetera Investment Management, still sees Mr.Powell reminding the market that he is cautious about inflation and that policy will depend on economic data and expects the central bank to update its inflation and economic growth projections.

Among other movers, cryptoexchange operator Coinbase Global fell almost 4% while miner

Riot Platforms fell almost 3% along with a 5% slide in bitcoin.

MicroStrategy shares fell 5.7% after the company announced it had completed a $603.75 million convertible debt offering — its second in a week — to fund bitcoin purchases.

AI server maker Super Micro Computer shares tumbled just under 9% after it announced it will sell two million shares that could fetch about $2 billion.

Spire Global shares soared 30.4% after it announced a collaboration with Nvidia for AI-driven weather prediction.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.25-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, which showed 286 new highs and 53 new lows.

On US exchanges 10.74 billion shares changed hands compared with the 12.37 billion average for the last 20 sessions. —