U.S. Stocks Seeing Further Upside After Early Rally

Stocks moved sharply higher early in the session on Thursday and continue to turn in a strong performance in afternoon trading. With the upward move, the Dow and the S&P 500 have reached new record intraday highs.

The major averages have seen further upside in recent trading, reaching new highs for the session. The Nasdaq is up 442.77 points or 2.8 percent at 16,023.64, the S&P 500 is up 99.13 points or 2.0 percent at 5,080.93 and the Dow is up 399.31 points or 1.0 percent at 39,011.55.

The rally on Wall Street largely reflects a positive reaction to earnings news from Nvidia (NVDA), with the chipmaker spiking by 15.1 percent to a record intraday high.

Nvidia is soaring after reporting better than expected fourth quarter results amid strong demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence. The company also provided upbeat revenue guidance.

Shares of Nvidia have skyrocketed this year amid optimism about demand for its AI chips, and traders had been questioning whether its results would support further upside.

Ahead of the earnings news, Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell said Nvidia’s results could be “make or break time for markets” and said the company needed to “smash it out of the park and show that the AI boom still has momentum.”

In U.S. economic news, a report released by the Labor Department showed an unexpected dip in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended February 17th.

The Labor Department said initial jobless claims fell to 201,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 213,000.

Economists had expected jobless claims to rise to 218,000 from the 213,000 originally reported for the previous week.

The National Association of Realtors also released a report showing a significant rebound in existing home sales in the month of January.

Sector News

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