2024-07-31 13:25:37 ET
One of the biggest driving forces behind the market rally that kicked off early last year has been the accelerating adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) . However, after the big run-up, investors have taken a step back, looking for additional evidence that the trend still had room to run. Several developments on Wednesday confirmed that this secular tailwind was still going strong.
With that as a backdrop, chipmaker Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) surged 11.4%, memory and storage chipmaker Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) jumped 7.7%, chip designer Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) rose 6.6%, semiconductor foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) climbed 5.4%, and AI and database specialist Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) rallied 2.9%, as of 11:40 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
A check of all the usual sources -- regulatory filings, earnings results, and changes to analysts' ratings and price targets -- turned up little in the way of company-specific news to account for the positive sentiment (more on that in a moment). That said, several catalysts helped spark a rally that sent most AI-related stocks higher.
For further details see:
Why Nvidia, Arm Holdings, and Other Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Rallied on Wednesday