By Purvi Agarwal and Niket Nishant
Aug 27 (Reuters) - The tech-heavy Nasdaq outperformed peers on Thursday after Nvidia's blockbuster results reaffirmed the strength of the AI boom and fueled gains in technology stocks.
Nvidia shares jumped 7.5% after the chip giant's robust forecast met lofty investor expectations, bolstering the view that the tech rally still has room to run as companies at the heart of AI buildout continue to deliver impressive growth.
"Nvidia's results show that the AI boom is not
running out of demand... while delivering that growth is becoming more expensive and capital-intensive," said Lale Akoner, global market strategist at etoro.
Its "ability to raise prices should help margins recover... but it cannot escape supply pressures entirely."
Nvidia has warned that shortages of memory components could curb the pace of the industry's growth.
U.S. chip-linked stocks broadly rose, with the semiconductor index adding 1.5%.
The S&P 500 Information Technology sector rose 2.6%, making it the sole gainer among the S&P 500's 11 constituents.
Salesforce surged 20.2% after raising annual revenue and profit forecasts, and rolling out a new plug-in integrated with Anthropic's Claude AI models. The stock was the biggest boost to the blue-chip Dow, and was set for its best one-day jump in six years.
CrowdStrike climbed 18% after the cybersecurity software provider raised its annual revenue forecast and topped second-quarter earnings estimate.
Both these reports calmed worries that advanced AI tools could upend the traditional software industry, boosting investor appetite for beaten-down software stocks and narrowing the gap with semiconductors, which are seen as the primary beneficiaries of the AI boom.
Other software firms ServiceNow and Palo Alto Networks gained 8.6% and 11.5%, respectively.
At 11:32 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 171.81 points, or 0.32%, to 53,635.69. The S&P 500 gained 44.59 points, or 0.58%, to 7,720.29, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 311.01 points, or 1.19%, to 26,441.21.
Moderna dropped 6.8% after unveiling a $2 billion convertible bonds sale, while HP lost 5.2% after its PC unit shipments and margins declined in the third quarter.
Discount retailer Dollar General fell 6.5% after it maintained its annual sales forecast.
FOCUS SHIFTS BACK TO MACRO
With Nvidia results out, investor attention turns to Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole address on Friday for hints on the central bank's stance on the latest inflation data and the U.S. Treasury's efforts to tame yields.
"Investors have very little history with how he (Warsh) talks. Whatever language he establishes gets applied to every data print for the next year," said Natalia Lojevsky, managing director at CIFC Asset Management.
A hotter-than-expected Personal Consumption Expenditures data on Wednesday muddied the policy outlook, dampening some of the optimism generated by a benign consumer inflation report earlier this month.
Two Fed officials shared their ongoing concerns about the inflation outlook on Thursday, reiterating their stance on rate hikes to combat price pressures.
Meanwhile, the new number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell for a second week, while the overall number slid to the lowest in a month, signaling a stable labor market.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.19-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 10 new 52-week highs and six new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 45 new highs and 57 new lows.
(Reporting by Purvi Agarwal, Niket Nishant and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
