The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite scored new all-time intraday and closing highs on Wednesday, a day after the broad market index snapped a seven-day winning streak because of a drop in Oracle that called to question the sustainability of the artificial intelligence trade. The U.S. government shutdown is also in its second week.
The benchmark S&P 500 climbed 0.58% to close at 6,753.72, supported by a rise in the index's information technology, utilities and industrials sectors. All three sectors notched fresh closing highs. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.12% to finish at 23,043.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.20 points to end the day at 46,601.78.
Stocks showed little reaction to the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's September meeting, where it cut rates for the first time in 2025. The minutes showed a Fed divided over how much further to cut rates.
Nvidia shares rose 2% after CEO Jensen Huang said that demand has risen in recent months, telling CNBC that "this year, particularly the last six months, demand of computing has gone up substantially." Huang also confirmed the company's involvement in funding Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, and said that he's "super excited about the financing opportunity they're doing."
"We know some of the things AI can do. We can all be impressed with some of the capabilities, but at the end of the day, there needs to be demand for the chips, demand for whatever the software layer that's built on top of all that compute looks like," Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield said to CNBC. "The demand still being there – and Nvidia is obviously in the best position in the world to comment on that – I do think is reassuring that the level of spending capex isn't completely circular."
The move comes just a day after the AI chip darling finished lower in sympathy with Oracle shares after a report that Oracle was seeing lighter margins in its cloud business than analysts were forecasting. The report also claimed the company is losing money on some of its deals to rent out Nvidia's chips.
That added to fears that the stock market is caught up in an AI bubble that harkens back to the late 1990s, when a feeding frenzy on early internet companies eventually led to the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Many market observers are urging investors to rebalance their portfolios, while also acknowledging there could be further upside before the AI rally exhausts itself.
"Even if you look at the late-'90s, we had big corrections in the Nasdaq every single year, so I think there's going to continue to be this enthusiasm for a sell-off in tech stocks," Mayfield said. "There could be several corrections, big corrections in tech stocks, you know DeepSeek-type moments, before we ultimately get to some sort of bull market top. I just don't really feel that we're close there."
Meanwhile, the current government shutdown dragged into its eighth day Wednesday, with the Senate once again rejecting dueling stopgap funding bills. The vote marks the sixth time the chamber was unable to advance legislation to reopen the government.
The stoppage has weighed little on equities thus far, but poses a greater risk to sentiment the longer it wears on, given the potential hits to the U.S. economy. President Donald Trump has suggested that not all federal workers who have been furloughed will receive back pay, saying Tuesday that "it depends on who we're talking about." Active-duty military members might also miss a paycheck scheduled for Oct. 15.
