By NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is starting June with more gains, led by some Big Tech stocks on Monday.
The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in early trading, coming off its sixth winning month in the last seven. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 14 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.8%.
Some familiar stars were leading the way again, as Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology keeps building.
Nvidia climbed another 4% to bring its gain for this year to an astonishing 130.2% after unveiling new products and services over the weekend. It’s so far been delivering blowout profits to keep at bay criticism that investors have become overzealous about the prospects for AI. Nvidia was by far the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward.
The jump was even bigger in another corner of Wall Street that’s well accustomed to stomach-churning swings, both up and down.
GameStop soared 64.2% in a move reminiscent of its early 2021 rocket ride that shook Wall Street and brought the term “meme stock” into the parlance of our times. GameStop jumped after a Reddit account associated with a central character in the 2021 episode said it had built a position of 5 million shares, along with options to buy more. The post made Sunday night said the position at the time was worth $181.4 million.
It made tidal waves online because it was the same Reddit account that showed similar screenshots of big GameStop holdings in 2021 that helped the struggling video-game retailer’s stock price rocket higher, way beyond what many critics on Wall Street called rational.
“Meme stock” has become the term to describe companies whose prices move more on the enthusiasm of smaller investors than on any fundamental change in their business prospects. Other meme stocks also rose Monday, including a 19.1% climb for AMC Entertainment.
In a more traditional move for the market, Stericycle jumped 15% after Waste Management said it would buy the medical-waste company for $5.8 billion in cash and assume $1.4 billion of its net debt. Waste Management slipped 1.1%.
Autodesk rose 9% after it released the results of a previously announced investigation into its accounting. The inquiry found the company made moves that helped it meet its goal for free cash flow in a prior fiscal year, but it found nothing that would require a restatement or adjustment of its financial statements. It also gave some encouraging financial forecasts.
In the bond market, Treasury yields were easing a bit and helping to keep conditions quiet across financial markets.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.45% from 4.50% late Friday.
This upcoming week has several top-tier economic reports that could send yields on sharper swings.
On Tuesday, the U.S. government will show how many job openings employers were advertising at the end of April. And on Friday, it will give the latest monthly update on overall growth for jobs and workers’ wages.
The numbers are crucial, and Wall Street hopes they will show a cooldown but not a plunge. The hope is that a slowdown in the job market and overall economy will remove upward pressure on inflation, and a cooldown there would in turn allow the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
The Fed has been keeping the federal funds rate at the highest level in two decades, which intentionally slows the economy and hurts investment prices, in hopes of getting high inflation fully under control.
In stock markets abroad, India’s Sensex soared 3.4% after after the country’s 6-week-long national election came to an end with most exit polls projecting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will extend his decade in power with a third consecutive term.
Stock indexes were also higher across Europe and much of the rest of Asia, though Shanghai was an exception.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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