Nvidia Leads Wall Street To New Record Highs Ahead Of Fed Decision

(RTTNews) - Stocks have moved mostly higher during trading on Wednesday, extending the strong upward move seen over the past several sessions. With the continued advance, the major averages have once again reached new record intraday highs.

Currently, the major averages are well off their highs of the session but still in positive territory. The Dow is up 218.78 points or 0.5 percent at 47,925.15, the Nasdaq is up 131.49 points or 0.6 percent at 23,958.99 and the S&P 500 is up 14.53 points or 0.2 percent at 6,905.42.

Nvidia (NVDA) continues to lead the markets higher, with the AI darling surging by 3.9 percent and becoming the first company with a $5 trillion market capitalization.

Shares of Nvidia spiked by 5.0 percent on Tuesday after the chipmaker announced deals with several big-name companies, including a strategic partnership with Nokia (NOK) that includes a $1 billion investment in the Finnish networking firm.

The continued strength on Wall Street also comes amid optimism ahead of the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy announcement later this afternoon.

With the Fed widely expected to lower interest rates by another quarter point, traders will be looking to the accompanying statement as well as Fed Chair Jerome Powell's post-meeting comments for clues about the likelihood of further rate cuts.

CME Group's FedWatch Tool is currently indicating an 87.3 percent chance the Fed will lower rates by another quarter point in December, but the views about the chances of further rate cuts in early 2026 are more mixed.

Following the Fed announcement, focus is likely to shift back to earnings news, with Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) among the companies due to release their quarterly results after the close of today's trading.

On the U.S. economic front, the National Association of Realtors released a report showing pending home sales unexpectedly came in flat in the month of September.

NAR said its pending homes sales index was unchanged at 74.8 in September after surging by 4.2 percent in August. Economists had expected pending home sales to jump by 1.0 percent.

A pending home sale is one in which a contract was signed but not yet closed. Normally, it takes four to six weeks to close a contracted sale.

Sector News

Computer hardware stocks are turning in some of the market's best performances on the day, with the NYSE Arca Computer Hardware Index soaring by 5.3 percent to a record intraday high.

Seagate Technology (STX) has helped lead the sector higher, skyrocketing by 18.7 percent after the data storage company reported better than expected fiscal first quarter results.

Substantial strength is also visible among oil service stocks, as reflected by the 2.6 percent surge by the Philadelphia Oil Service Index.

The rally by oil service stocks comes as the price of crude oil has moved sharply higher following the release of a report showing a steep drop by U.S. crude oil inventories.

Semiconductor, gold and transportation stocks are also seeing considerable strength on the day, while commercial real estate stocks have shown a notable move to the downside.

Other Markets

In overseas trading, stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region moved mostly higher during trading on Wednesday. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index surged by 2.2 percent and South Korea's Kospi shot up by 1.8 percent, with both indexes reaching new record closing highs.

Meanwhile, the major European markets have turned mixed on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index is up by 0.6 percent, the French CAC 40 Index is down by 0.2 percent and the German DAX Index is down by 0.6 percent.

In the bond market, treasuries have shown a lack of direction ahead of the Fed announcement. Currently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, is up by less than a basis point at 3.989 percent.