© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., January 9, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid//File Photo
By Amruta Khandekar and Bansari Mayur Kamdar
(Reuters) -Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open marginally higher on Friday after a stunning rally in the previous session, spurred by upbeat results from AI poster child Nvidia (NASDAQ:) that renewed enthusiasm about artificial intelligence.
The and surged to record closing highs on Thursday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was a whisker away from its all-time high, as investors piled into technology stocks with the AI-fueled frenzy on Wall Street gaining more steam.
Nvidia added $277 billion in stock market value on Thursday, Wall Street’s largest one-day gain in history.
Shares of the heavyweight chip designer were up 2.3% in premarket trade on Friday and the company is closing in on $2 trillion in market value for the first time.
“Traders are going to be closely watching Nvidia’s move today. Will it hold up? That’s a question mark,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities.
“I would suspect at one point or another, the run up is going to run out of steam. Over-exuberance in the market is likely to end up with a noticeable pullback.”
Most megacap stocks were subdued on Friday, with Tesla (NASDAQ:), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:) and Apple (NASDAQ:) down between 0.1% and 0.6%.
At 8:25 a.m. ET, were up 36 points, or 0.09%, were up 5.75 points, or 0.11%, and were up 12.25 points, or 0.07%.
Among other stocks, Carvana (N:) surged 27.4% on reporting its first-ever annual profit, helped by its pact with bondholders to cut its outstanding debt by $1 billion.
Warner Bros Discovery (NASDAQ:) slipped 5.0% on reporting a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss as the media conglomerate battled the fallout of the twin Hollywood strikes on content generation.
Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ:) fell 2.7% after it announced pricing of $1.5 billion convertible senior notes.
Jack Dorsey-led Block jumped 15.7% after the payments firm forecast adjusted core earnings for the current quarter above Wall Street estimates, betting on consumer resilience.
All the three major indexes were set for weekly gains after turbulence in the prior week when hotter-than-expected inflation data dampened expectations of early interest rate cuts from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Traders firmed up bets against any U.S. interest-rate cuts before June after Fed Governor Christopher Waller on Thursday said he was in “no rush” to lower rates.
