By Noel Randewich and Avinash P
Aug 13 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 climbed to a record high on Thursday, fueled by advances in Sandisk and other heavyweight technology stocks, as tame producer price inflation data supported expectations the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates at its September meeting.
Memory chip makers Sandisk and Micron Technology surged 16% and 6.7%, respectively. Broadcom added 1.3% and Meta Platforms rose 2.8%.
Strong forecasts in recent weeks from companies including Microsoft
and Amazon have reduced investors' concerns about massive spending on AI data centers.
Shares of AI cloud company CoreWeave were flat on Thursday. CoreWeave surged 19% a day earlier after lifting its annual capital spending forecast.
"The AI earnings-driven tech boom continues," said Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors in New York. "It's an earnings boom, not a bubble."
The S&P 500 was up 0.56% at 7,791.70 points, off an earlier all-time high of 7,816.70.
The Nasdaq gained 0.73% to 26,782.15 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.01% at 53,766.27 points.
Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes rose, led by real estate, up 1.18%, followed by a 1.13% gain in communication services.
The S&P 500 is up almost 14% in 2026, while the Nasdaq has gained 15%.
Cisco Systems dropped 9% after the networking equipment maker's upbeat revenue forecast failed to satisfy investors with high expectations.
Iran and the United States remain at loggerheads over efforts to agree on a permanent end to the Iran war, according to a senior Iranian source, while traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz remained severely curtailed.
Fresh data showed U.S. producer prices were unchanged in July as goods prices fell and the cost of services increased marginally, while the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, pointing to a stable jobs market.
Traders are pricing in a 63% chance that the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged at its meeting next month, according to CME's FedWatch tool.
Brent crude oil futures were down 1.5% at $87.66 a barrel.
Netflix added 3.7% after billionaire investor Bill Ackman unveiled a new holding in the streaming company as part of Pershing Square's biggest portfolio overhaul in years.
Tapestry shares plunged 16% after the Coach owner forecast sluggish annual revenue growth.
Dell Technologies and HP gained 2.9% and 3.6%, respectively, after quarterly results from China's Lenovo beat expectations.
Advancing issues outnumbered falling ones within the S&P 500 by a 1.8-to-one ratio.
The S&P 500 posted 28 new highs and one new low; the Nasdaq recorded 138 new highs and 74 new lows.
(Reporting by Avinash P and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru, and by Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Rod Nickel)
