S&P 500 closes at a record, powered by Nvidia’s rise and rate cut hopes: Live updates (2024)

Stocks closed higher on Wednesday, as chipmaker Nvidia helped lead the S&P 500 to a fresh record high.

The broad market index added 1.18% to close at 5,354.03. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.96% to finish the session at 17,187.90, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 96.04 points, or 0.25%, to 38,807.33.

— Brian Evans

Investors should look to sector leaders right now, according to Margaret Patel, senior portfolio manager for multi-asset solutions at Allspring Global Investments.

Patel pointed to Broadcom, Eaton and McKesson as specific examples of these key names that traders should consider.

"You continue to need to stay with the leaders in their sectors," Patel said on CNBC's "The Exchange." "That's what we've seen over the last couple of years — strong, big companies just get stronger and stronger."

She noted that smaller-cap companies, by comparison, have cooler growth in line with the chilled macroeconomic environment.

— Alex Harring

Shares of Madrigal Pharmaceuticals and others developing treatments for a serious liver condition tumbled on Wednesday after Eli Lilly shared preliminary abstract data illustrating how effective tirzepatide can be for this group. Eli Lilly's drug is sold under the brand name Zepbound for patients with obesity and Mounjaro for patients with Type 2 diabetes.

Madrigal shares fell more than 7% on Wednesday. However, Piper Sandler analyst Yasmeen Rahimi reiterated an overweight rating on the stock, emphasizing that Madrigal is the only company with U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to treat the disorder, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH. The disease, which was previously called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, is characterized by a buildup of fatty deposits in the liver.

Shares of rival 89bio were recently down more than 2%, off its lows for the day.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Kristen Kluska said although she expects some patients will treat their MASH with GLP-1 medication, there are patients who cannot tolerate the drug's side effects. Therefore, she sees room for multiple treatments.

— Christina Cheddar Berk

Artificial intelligence darling Nvidia leapt to a market cap of $3 trillion Wednesday afternoon.

Shares surged more than 4%, jumping to a fresh all-time high of $1,221.25 during the session. The stock has been on a stellar run in 2024, up 146% in 2024, as investors bet on the AI boom and Nvidia's role in supplying the chips to power it.

NVDA's one-day performance

Nvidia is in good company among tech giants in the $3 trillion market cap club, joining the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

— Darla Mercado, Kif Leswing

Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Wednesday tracked for its best day since 2020 on the back of strong earnings. Shares notched an all-time high in the session.

Shares climbed nearly 12% in Wednesday afternoon trading. If that holds through market close, it will mark the best session since March 2020 and the fourth-best day on record.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 1-day

Wednesday's rally comes after the company issued better-than-expected earnings results on both lines. Hewlett Packard Enterprise posted adjusted earnings per share of 42 cents on $7.2 billion in revenue, while analysts surveyed by LSEG had forecast earnings per share of 39 cents and $6.82 billion in revenue.

— Alex Harring

Most of the stocks hardest hit this week are ones whose fortunes are closely tied to the strength of the economy, suggesting some investors are concerned about the outlook for slower short-term growth and the profits it brings.

Among the cyclical losers:

• is off 3.6% this week, the worst of the S&P 500's 11 main sectors. The U.S. Oil Fund ETF, which tracks the price of crude oil, is lower by 4.3% this week. Gasoline futures are lower by 2.6% this week.
• and the S&P Composite 1500 Regional Bank Index are both lower by 3.2%, but even Berkshire Hathaway is down 2% this week.
• has fallen 1.6% since last Friday's close, while the Dow Jones Transportation Average is lower by 1.2%.

Slowdown concerns aren't universal, however. The is higher by 0.9%, nearly matching the S&P 500's 1.1% advance this week.

— Scott Schnipper

Cipher Mining rose Wednesday after the company said it upgraded its bitcoin mining fleet for 2024 and 2025 to include S21 Pro mining rigs from Bitmain. It also entered into an agreement to purchase the latest generation A1566 machines from Canaan for delivery in the fourth quarter, as well as its next-generation mining rigs when they become available next year — with pricing locked in near current A1566prices.

Shares of Cipher gained 2.3% in midday trading.

With the new investment, Cipher increased its target hash rate for 2024 and 2025. A miner's hash rate is a measure of the computational power it uses to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. A higher hash rate can sometimes imply a better chance of finding a block on the network and earning the associated reward for processing it. The current reward is 3.125 bitcoins.

— Tanaya Macheel

Shares of GameStop jumped more than 15% to trade above $30 apiece Wednesday, bringing its week-to-date gain to 32%. The meme stock fell 5.4% in the previous session.

The speculative rally was initially triggered by GameStop champion "Roaring Kitty," who posted a screenshot of his portfolio holding a massive amount of GameStop shares and call options.

These are some of the stocks making big midday moves:

• CrowdStrike— The cybersecurity company popped 9% after offering a strong outlook and a first-quarter results beat.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise— The technology stock climbed 12%, notching a 52-week high after earnings came in better than anticipated.
• Brown-Forman— The alcohol seller dropped 5.5% to a new 52-week low following underwhelming revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter.

See the full list here.

— Alex Harring

Riot Platform's stock plunged 5% during Wednesday's session after Kerrisdale Capital revealed it's short the stock.

The firm said that Riot will always be "too high-cost to mine bitcoin profitably" and called bitcoin mining's business model "one of the worst [it's] ever seen," citing it as capital intensive, extremely competitive and a pure commodity product that's now drawing "intense" regulatory scrutiny.

"Today, we launch a war against bitcoin miners, an industry of snake oil salesmen that are incinerating both investor capital and the environment and should be banished from America much like the Chinese RTO frauds that we helped kick out a decade ago," Kerrisdale said in a separate post on X.

Shares of the bitcoin miner are also down around 41% so far this year.

Riot Platforms, 1-day

Nvidia shares rose 3% on Wednesday, putting the chipmaker within close range of a $3 trillion market value.

Shares last traded at around $1,199 and at a market capitalization of roughly $2.95 trillion. The company officially closed above the $2 trillion level in March after testing the milestone in late February.

— Samantha Subin

Nvidia's year-to-date gain is responsible for a significant chunk of the S&P 500's 2024 rally, according to UBS.

"NVDA accounts for 30% of the markets return YTD," wrote strategist Jonathan Golub in a Wednesday note to clients. "S&P 500 returns drop from 11.3% to 7.8% ex-NVDA. Many stocks have moved in step with the AI theme."

Shares of Nvidia have rallied more than 141% since the start of the year and have more than tripled on a yearly basis.

— Samantha Subin

Activity in the U.S. services sector expanded at a faster-than-expected pace in May, according to a report Wednesday from the Institute for Supply Management.

The ISM services index showed that 53.8% of purchase managers surveyed reported expansion, up from 49.4% in April and better than the Dow Jones estimate of 50.7%.

Within the PMI survey, indexes for new export orders and production posted double-digit percentage increases for the month while imports tumbled. The employment index edged higher while the prices gauge nudged lower.

— Jeff Cox

Alphabet has found its new chief financial officer in Anat Ashkenazi, who currently serves in the role for pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

Ashkenazi will officially step into the role effective July 31. The announcement comes almost a year after Alphabet first said the company's current CFO, Ruth Porat, would be moving to new roles as chief investment officer and president.

Ashkenazi joined Eli Lilly in 2001 and has been holding the role of CFO since 2021.

Read more about this breaking news here.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Stocks were higher on Wednesday following fresh labor market data that fueled investor hope for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.

The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 64 points, or 0.1%.

— Brian Evans

Data from ADP showed companies added 152,000 jobs in May, much fewer than a Dow Jones estimate of 175,000. It is also well below a downwardly revised April figure of 188,000.

"Job gains and pay growth are slowing going into the second half of the year," ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said. "The labor market is solid, but we're monitoring notable pockets of weakness tied to both producers and consumers."

The report comes ahead of the government's nonfarm payrolls report due out Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

— Fred Imbert

These are the stocks moving the most in premarket trading:

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise— The technology stock climbed 15% after Hewlett Packard reported stronger-than-expected results for its fiscal second quarter.
• Instacart— Shares of the e-commerce company rose nearly 2% after an upgrade to buy from hold at research firm Gordon Haskett.
• CrowdStrike— Shares soared 10% after the cybersecurity firm posted better-than-expected first-quarter results and strong guidance.

Read the full list of stocks moving here.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Mortgage demand slumped for the second week in a row last week, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index.

Overall mortgage application volume slipped 5.2% for the week ending May 31 compared to the week prior, the index showed. Applications pulled back as contract rates for 30-year fixed mortgages with loan balances of $766,550 or less ticked up to 7.07% from 7.05%.

— Brian Evans

U.S.-listed shares of Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio rose more than 1% in the premarket after Reuters reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter, that the company received regulatory approval to build a third factory in China.

Nio shares have struggled this year, losing more than 42%.

NIO year to date

In a regulatory filing, Deere said it plans to cut "its production and salaried workforce to help the Company meet its strategic priorities while reducing overlap and redundancy." This comes as the company tries to navigate a demand slowdown for farm equipment.

Deere shares were little changed in the premarket.

— Fred Imbert

European stocks opened higher Wednesday, with investors in the region looking ahead to the next meeting of the European Central Bank.

The pan-European Stoxx 600was up 0.5% in early trade, with all sectors and major bourses in the green.

The U.K.'s FTSE index was up 0.3% at 8,258, Germany's DAX was up 0.5% at 18,494, France's CAC 40was up 0.4% at 7,971 and Italy's FTSE MIB was 0.4% higher at 34,425.

Stoxx 600.

India stocks steadied a day after benchmark indexes saw their biggest one-day fall in four years as the electoral performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party fell short of expectations.

TheNifty 50 indexedged 0.59% higherand the BSE Sensexadded 0.75%.

TheNifty 50and the Sensex lost 5.93% and 5.74%, respectively, on Tuesday, marking their largest loss since 2020. India markets lost more than 31.06 trillion rupees, or about $371 billion, according to the All India Market Capitalization index.

Australia's economy grew 1.1% year on year in the first quarter, slowing from a revised fourth-quarter growth figure of 1.6%.

The 1.1% growth also was slightly below a Reuters poll expectation of 1.2%. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, Australia's GDP rose 0.1%, less than the 0.2% expected in the Reuters poll.

Katherine Keenan, head of national accounts at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, noted that "GDP growth was weak in March, with the economy experiencing its lowest through the year growth since December 2020."

— Lim Hui Jie

China's services activity grew at the fastest pace in 10 months in May, according to a private survey.

The Caixin S&P Global services purchasing managers' index rose to 54 from 52.5 in April, growing at the quickest pace since July 2023.

A PMI reading above the 50 mark separates expansion from contraction.

The survey also showed that incoming new work increased at the fastest pace since May 2023.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Real wages in Japan fell for a 25th straight month in April, potentially stifling the Bank of Japan's plans to raise interest rates and realize its "virtuous cycle" of increasing wages and prices.

Government data showed that real wages fell 0.7%, a softer fall from the 2.1% loss in March. Nominal wages came in at 296,884 yen, or $1,913.28, growing 2.1% year on year.

This accelerated from March's nominal wage growth of 1%, posting its highest pace of growth in 10 months.

— Lim Hui Jie

Traders are awaiting data on private employers from ADP due Wednesday morning for insights into the state of the labor market.

Economists polled by Dow Jones are anticipating that these employers increased their payrolls by 175,000 positions in May. That would mark a slowdown from the addition of 192,000 jobs in April.

— Alex Harring

These are some of the stocks making notable after-hours moves:

• CrowdStrike— The cybersecurity company popped around 7% after offering better-than-expected quarterly results and guidance.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise— The IT company added about 11% on the back of a stronger-than-anticipated financial report for the fiscal second quarter.

See the full list here.

— Alex Harring

Stock futures were near flat shortly after 6 p.m. ET.

Futures tied to the Dow added close to 0.1%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures both inched slightly above their flatlines.

— Alex Harring