U.S. stock indexes fell in afternoon trading after approaching record highs early in the session. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) briefly topped 5,500 for the first time in history, but Nvidia’s (NVDA) record surge faded, propelling the company to the top of the world’s most valuable public company.
The S&P 500 was down about 0.5% after closing at its 31st record high of the year on Tuesday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) was down 1% after hitting a new high earlier in the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) was up about 0.5%.
After the holiday break on Wednesday, Wall Street struggled to keep winning in 2024. Stock rallies this year have been driven largely by excitement around the potential of AI, and no company has captured more of the public’s attention than Nvidia. Despite Thursday’s drop, its shares are up more than 170% so far this year.
On Tuesday, NVIDIA made a stunning surge to unseat Microsoft (MSFT) as the world’s most valuable company, just two weeks after it knocked Apple (AAPL) out of the No. 2 spot on the list. Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre writes that the company’s rise to the top has been so rapid that some of the more hesitant investors have had a hard time keeping up.
Elsewhere on Thursday, attention shifted to global central banks after the Swiss National Bank cut interest rates for the second time this year, while the Bank of England kept its benchmark interest rate at a 16-year high but there were signs a rate cut was possible in the summer.
Meanwhile, in the US, most traders continue to expect the Fed to cut interest rates before September, according to the CME FedWatch tool. The biggest economic data was the weekly jobless claims figure, which fell by 5,000 to 238,000 last week, below the consensus forecast of 235,000.
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