US Stocks Rally, Dow Jones Achieves Record Highs As GDP Outperforms, Nvidia Falls: What's Driving Markets Thursday?

Author: Piero Cingari | August 29, 2024 01:34pm

Wall Street rallied robustly on Thursday, with traders embracing a risk-on approach after government data revealed the U.S. economy grew by 3% in the second quarter, outpacing earlier estimates of 2.8%, driven by strong upward revisions in household consumption.

The upbeat market sentiment prevailed even as NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), the year’s top-performing S&P 500 stock, slipped over 3% following its earnings report, with revenue projections for the current quarter failing to impress the heightened expectations.

Other semiconductor stocks decoupled from Nvidia and showed strong gains, with the broader iShares Semiconductor ETF (NYSE:SOXX) up over 2%.

Small caps rallied 1.4%, positively reacting to the upwardly revised GDP data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.1%. achieving fresh record highs to over 41,500 points.

Commodities gained strength, with natural gas rallying 2%, oil prices climbing 1.6%, gold advancing 0.8%, and silver rising 1.3%.

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) rose 2.5%, on track to snap three straight session of losses.

Thursday’s Performance In Major US Indices, ETFs

Major Indices	Price	1-day %chg
Russell 2000	2,223.27	1.4%
Nasdaq 100	19,614.94	1.4%
Dow Jones	41,562.92	1.1%
S&P 500	5,645.35	1.0%

According to Benzinga Pro data:

• The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) was 0.9% higher to $563.17.
• The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE:DIA) rose 1.1% to $416.02.
• The tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust Series (NASDAQ:QQQ) was up 1.2% to $477.23.
• The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (NYSE:IWM) rose 1.4% to $220.24.
• The Industrials Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLI) outperformed, up by 1.5%. The Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLRE) lagged, down by 0.4%.

Thursday’s Stock Movers

• Chipmaker stocks rallying the most on Thursday despite Nvidia’s dip were Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) up 5.6%, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) up 4.7% and ON Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:ON) up 4.3%.
• Other stocks moving on earnings are American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. (NYSE:AEO) down 3.3%, Affirm Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFRM) up 33%, Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) up 15%, Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE:BURL) up 0.7%, Campbell Soup Company (NASDAQ:CPB) down 1.5%, Cooper Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:COO) up over 11%, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) up 5%, Dollar General Corp (NYSE:DG) down 30%, Five Below, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVE) down 1%, HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) up 4%, Nutanix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTNX) up 19%, NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) down 8%, Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA) down 16%, Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) down 15%, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) up 0.5% and Victoria’s Secret & Co. (NYSE:VSCO) down 1.3%.
• Those reporting after the close include Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK), Dell Technologies Inc. (NYSE:DELL), Gap, Inc. (NYSE:GAP), Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ:LULU), Marvell Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRVL), MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDB) and Ulta Beauty Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA).

Read Now:

• Nvidia Analysts Say Pullback Is Buying Opportunity: ‘Pushing AI Envelope Too Significant To Slow Down’

Photo: Shutterstock

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