STORY: U.S. stocks ended higher on Wednesday, with the Dow adding about a third of a percent, the S&P 500 gaining roughly a quarter of a percent to close at a record high, and the Nasdaq ticking up about two-tenths of a percent.
Investors were laser-focused on earnings from Nvidia after the market close, which forecast third-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates helped by robust demand for its artificial intelligence chips from cloud providers.
Shares of the chip maker, however, fell in extended trading.
Rob Haworth, senior investment strategy director at U.S. Bank Asset Management Group, said that despite periodic pullbacks among AI-related stocks, they remain the market's main drivers.
“Artificial intelligence is a really important investment theme for this market, and it's almost a secular one in that we've seen so much investment. And that investment continues, and it's broadening out, right? It's no longer just the people creating the software or creating the generative AI engines. It's into data centers, power utility companies, right? How and into how they are used. So this is a trend that looks like it's here to continue.”
Shares of tech and other AI heavyweights were mixed Wednesday, with Microsoft gaining nearly 1% and Meta Platforms dipping almost 1%.
Among other movers, MongoDB soared 38% after the software-maker raised its annual profit forecast.
And shares of J.M. Smucker fell nearly four-and-a-half percent after the Jif peanut butter maker missed first-quarter profit estimates.
