S&P 500, Nasdaq close at records on jobs data
STORY: U.S. stocks rallied in a holiday-shortened session on Thursday, with the Dow and S&P 500 each adding roughly eight-tenths of a percent and the Nasdaq climbing 1%.
The gains pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to fresh record highs.
A surprisingly strong jobs report encouraged investors, who shrugged off dimming chances of an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this month, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.
"I think the next move for the Fed really is to remain on hold. The data came out strongly this morning. The bond market saw interest rates rise a bit in response to that. Also, the expectations for a Fed cut were delayed to September, probably at the earliest. So, you know, people are waiting for the next shoe to drop. But what we find is that the economy continues to remain resilient."
Meanwhile, shares of Nvidia rose more than 1%, putting its market capitalization close to $4 trillion. The AI powerhouse is close to becoming the world's most valuable company in history.
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Other stocks on the move included Tripadvisor, which climbed more than 16.5% after the Wall Street Journal reported activist investor Starboard Value had built a more than 9% stake in the online travel company.
And shares of Datadog jumped about 15% after the cloud security firm was set to replace Juniper Networks on the S&P 500.
Markets will be closed Friday for the July 4th holiday.