Good day for 401(k)s: S&P 500/Dow hit new highs; Nvidia fervor takes hold of Wall Street

Nicole Goodkind, CNN | 2/22/2024, 3:11 p.m.
US stocks soared to new highs on Thursday after Nvidia, the third largest company on Wall Street, blew past earnings …
A person looking at the NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchip at Gigabyte booth at COMPUTEX 2023 in Taipei. Mandatory Credit: Walid Berrazeg/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource

US stocks soared to new highs on Thursday after Nvidia, the third largest company on Wall Street, blew past earnings expectations and bolstered investor optimism on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both notched new record highs and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was within striking distance of its own all-time high, reached in November 2021.

The Dow ended the day 457 points, or 1.2%, higher. The S&P 500 gained 2.1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 3% higher.

Nvidia (NVDA) also reached a new record high on Thursday, popping 16.4% after reporting extraordinary earnings growth, fueled by the artificial intelligence boom.

Nvidia, a chipmaker whose technology is used to power AI, mentioned the term 67 times before taking any questions during its earnings call Wednesday.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement on Wednesday evening that generative AI has now “hit the tipping point,” and that he expects more growth ahead. “Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” he said.

The California-based firm has seen its take-home income grow 769% year-over-year and the company’s full-year profits are up more than 580% from the year earlier.

Other chipmakers benefited from Nvidia’s good news. Shares of AMD (AMD) were 10.7% higher on Thursday morning and Microsoft (MSFT) was 2.4% higher.

Tech stocks also enjoyed a boost. Meta and Amazon were up 3.9% and 3.6%, respectively, and shares of Apple were 1.1% higher.

But some companies were left out of the fun: Intel, which laid out its plans to compete with Nvidia during a conference on Wednesday, fell by 1.1%.

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