Wall Street ended mixed on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) as investors piled into artificial intelligence (AI) stocks following a flurry of major deal announcements, offsetting weakness in blue-chip names and a lack of fresh economic data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 226.2 points, or 0.5%, to 47,336.7. The S&P 500 added 11.8 points, or 0.2%, to 6,852.0, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 109.7 points or 0.5% to 23,834.7, supported by gains in heavyweight technology shares.
Amazon led the market higher, rallying 4% to a fresh record close after announcing a US$38 billion partnership with OpenAI to host and scale the ChatGPT maker’s artificial intelligence workloads on Amazon Web Services.
Nvidia shares rose 2.2% after President Donald Trump confirmed that the chipmaker’s most advanced microchips will be reserved for U.S. companies and restricted from export to China and other foreign markets.
The stock was further buoyed by Microsoft’s announcement that it had received export licences to ship Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates, part of a broader AI investment worth US$15.2 billion by 2029.
The broader chip sector climbed after data centre operator Iren struck a multiyear $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft to supply Nvidia GB300 GPUs.
Monday’s session followed a strong October performance, with the S&P 500 and Dow rising 2.3% and 2.5%, respectively, while the Nasdaq surged 4.7%.
The month’s gains were fuelled by momentum in AI-related trades and signs of improving trade relations between the U.S. and China.
Traders are now turning their attention to the next round of corporate earnings, including results from AI-focused firms Palantir Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
On the bond markets, yields edged higher, with the 10-year Treasury rising 0.6% to 4.105% and the 2-year yield up by the same margin to 3.6%.
