AI stocks lead rebound
A rebound for stocks in the artificial intelligence industry lifted the US market on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 rose 1.3% and got close to recovering all of its brutal sell-off from last week triggered by worries about a potential slowdown for AI-related businesses. The index pulled within 2.6% of its all-time high set last month.
The Nasdaq composite rallied a market-leading 1.6% because of the strength for tech stocks, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254 points, or 0.5%.
Leading the way was one of the stocks that's been at the centre of the AI industry's manic recent swings. CoreWeave, which rents out access to AI chips to customers over the cloud, leaped 24.7% after showing investors that it lost less money during the summer than analysts expected.
It also made announcements that could allay some of the worries dogging it and the wider industry. For one, concerns are high about how CoreWeave and other companies will handle higher interest rates in the bond market, which make borrowing money more expensive.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said his company has roughly $US9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits expected in the next three months, along with other sources of cash to help pay its bills. That had some analysts saying it's making progress toward being able to self-fund its business.
AI investment concerns linger
Worries have also been rising about a potential slowdown in the overall industry given longstanding worries about whether AI will produce enough profit and productivity to make the expensive investments worth it. Such concerns accelerated following sweeping victories for Democrats in last week's US midterm elections. The worry is that Democratic control of statehouses across the country could lead to restrictions on the construction of additional AI data centres and the industry broadly.
But CoreWeave suggested strength is continuing, at least for now, and it raised its forecast for how much revenue it expects to make this year. The number was higher than analysts expected.
Many challenges remain for CoreWeave and for the AI industry broadly. But CoreWeave's report nevertheless helped stocks across the industry claw back some of their sharp recent losses.
Micron Technology, which sells memory for computers, rallied 11.9%. Broadcom rose 4%. GE Vernova, which is helping to power AI data centres, added 1.4%.
Even Nvidia climbed 2.9%.
The chip company that quickly became the face of the AI boom had been falling earlier this week for reasons that have nothing to do with the rest of the industry. Its board is investigating its CEO, Jensen Huang, after he admitted to a relationship with a businesswoman who allegedly fed intelligence and advanced chips to China.
Oil prices rise
Trading elsewhere on Wall Street was more mixed.
United Airlines lost 1.8% as stocks broadly felt pressure from a rise in oil prices, which recovered some of their losses from earlier in the week.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude added 1.4% to $US92.76. It's near the middle of its $US72 to $US120 range since the war with Iran sent oil prices much higher early this year.
Higher oil prices tend to push yields upward in the bond market, but the US bond market was closed on Wednesday in observance of Veterans Day.
Yields jumped in the bond market the day before following a worse-than-expected reading on inflation in the United States. The discouraging report raised expectations for coming hikes to interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 98.45 points to 7,619.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254.60 to 52,486.49, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 400.31 to 25,466.19.
Global markets mostly higher
Across global markets, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
South Korea's Kospi jumped 2.6% for one of the world's biggest moves, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was an outlier after falling 1%.
Stocks rose 0.5% in Shanghai as China's biggest online shopping festival, Singles Day, began on Wednesday. Its sales data will offer a gauge of how strong spending is in the world's second-largest economy.
