Stock market today: S&P 500 continues daily streak of gains

Stocks ended Monday higher, with all three major indexes building on impressive gains from last week. Market participants are optimistic that this year’s extensive list of Federal Reserve speakers — including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell — will provide clues as to when the central bank will start cutting interest rates. interest rates and by how much.

Indeed, investors will be closely watching the Federal Reserve, with several central bank officials expected to appear at the speech. The most notable is Powell, who will take the microphone Friday at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.

Fed appearances in Jackson Hole are known to cause stock market volatility. For example, in 2022. shares fell dramatically after Powell warned that higher interest rates would cause “suffering” for households and businesses.

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This time he is expected to stick to his script with July Fed meeting. However, “one evolution of the language in the July FOMC suggests the committee is ‘very close’ or ‘close’ to the point where easing is likely,” he said. Michael Gapenhead of US economics at BofA Global Research.

A more dovish signal could be the statement that the Commission wants to avoid an “unexpected weakening” in the labour market (especially in view of July Employment Report), rather than simply reacting to the event once it occurs,” Gapen adds.

AMD buys ZT Systems for $5 billion to expand AI capabilities

In news about individual stocks, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rose 4.5% after the chipmaker said it plans to acquire cloud infrastructure company ZT Systems in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $4.9 billion.

“Our acquisition of ZT Systems is another important step in our long-term artificial intelligence (AI) strategy to deliver leadership training and reasoning solutions that can be rapidly deployed at scale in the cloud and with enterprise customers,” said Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su in a statement. press release.

What’s more, AMD’s purchase of ZT Systems allows it to challenge Nvidia’s (NVDA, +4.4%) dominant position in the AI data center chipset market, “by enhancing their ability to accelerate deployment to directly compete with Nvidia’s popular graphics processing units (GPUs),” it said. Mark PerezInvestment Director at Linqto“This acquisition better equips AMD to compete with NVIDIA’s integrated approach, potentially offering a similar end-to-end solution and capturing a larger share of the AI infrastructure market.”

Perez adds that M&A activity in the AI sector is just starting to heat up, as many venture-backed AI companies have been funded at unsustainable valuations.

GM shares surge after latest round of layoffs

General Motors (GM) rose by 1.0% after CNBC reported The automaker is cutting 1,000 jobs in its software and services division. The layoffs come as GM “prioritizes investments that will have the greatest impact,” according to the report.

The news follows headlines from last week in which GM said that staff cuts in China and may meet with SAIC Motor, its joint venture partner, to discuss capacity reductions.

Argus Research Analyst Bill Selesky (Buy) says General Motors’ efforts to promote “capital spending discipline, a calibrated product strategy and an enhanced cost-cutting program” are “impressive because they demonstrate that GM’s management team is both financially flexible and strategically focused on the long term.”

McDonald’s sets new price target

McDonald’s (MCD) was another big winner, rising 3.3% to become the top Dow Jones stocks today. The blue-chip gain was a bullish note from Evercore ISI, which said it was becoming “increasingly bullish” on MCD’s domestic business over the next year or so.

Evercore analysts reiterated an Outperform rating (equivalent to Buy) on McDonald’s shares and raised their price target from $300 to $320, implying an 11% upside from current levels.

As for the main indices, Nasdaq Composite increased by 1.4% to 17,876, and S&P500 It was 1.0% higher at 5,608. It was the eighth consecutive victory for both indexes, the longest daily winning streak since December for the Nasdaq and the longest winning streak for the S&P 500 since November.

This Dow Jones Industrial Average that number rose 0.6% to 40,896, marking the fifth consecutive increase.