NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks are ticking higher Wednesday to send Wall Street toward more records.
The S&P 500 was up 0.2% in early trading and on track to set an all-time high for the 37th time this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 23 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was adding 0.4% to its own record.
Big technology companies were leading the way, which has become the norm on Wall Street, and Taiwan Semiconductor’s U.S.-listed shares rose 1.8% after it said its revenue climbed nearly 33% in June from a year earlier.
Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC, makes the chips for Nvidia and others that have been driving the business world’s rush into artificial-intelligence technology. The promise of big profits in the future from AI has sent Nvidia in particular to breathtaking heights over the last year, and Nvidia rose another 1.2% Wednesday to bring its gain for the year so far to 168.5%. It was again the strongest single force pushing the S&P 500 upward.
The frenzy around AI has been a major reason the U.S. stock market has climbed to records despite a slowdown in the economy’s growth and a tightening squeeze on lower-income households. So have hopes that inflation is slowing enough for the Federal Reserve to deliver much-sought cuts to interest rates later this year.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell will return to Capitol Hill to give testimony about interest rates, and he’ll likely echo his comments from a day before when he said he was aware of the risks of waiting too long to cut rates.
The Fed is trying to pull off a difficult tightrope walk where it keeps rates high for long enough to slow the economy and get inflation back down to its 2% target without overdoing it and causing a recession. Much of Wall Street is making moves with the expectation that the Fed will begin cutting its main interest rate in September, down from the highest level in more than two decades. But traders have a long history of being premature in their calls for rate cuts.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.28% from 4.30% late Tuesday and from 4.70% since April. The move since the spring is a significant one for the bond market and offers support for stock prices.
The two-year Treasury yield, which moves more on expectations for Fed action, edged down to 4.61% from 4.62% late Tuesday.
A report coming on Thursday could cause more dramatic swings in the bond and stock markets. That’s when the U.S. government will release the latest monthly update on inflation. Economists expect it to show U.S. consumers paid prices for food, airline tickets and everything else that were 3.1% higher in June than a year earlier. That would be a touch slower than May’s 3.3% inflation rate.
Later this week will also bring the unofficial start to the latest earnings reporting season. Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase and others will report how much profit they made during the spring from April through June, and the hope on Wall Street is for S&P 500 companies to deliver the strongest growth in more than two years.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.6% to close at another record. It’s jumped 25% so far this year, even more than the U.S. stock market, as AI enthusiasm has pushed up its technology stocks. Its exporters are also benefiting from the yen’s falling value against the dollar, which can boost their profits.
Other markets in Asia were mixed, while European indexes were higher.