US stock markets on the rise

US stock markets ended the session with a rise. This was decided by the Fed chairman's conference after Wednesday's meeting, which ended, as expected, with a decision to maintain rates. Jerome Powell improved investor sentiment by saying that the US economic situation is still good and allows the central bank not to rush to adjust monetary policy. At the same time, he signaled an increase in the risk of higher unemployment and higher inflation resulting from the trade policy of the Donald Trump administration. Goldman Sachs Asset Management assessed that the probability of maintaining the current rates at the June meeting has increased, which was also signaled by the CME FedWatch Tool. The yield on 2-year US bonds decreased by less than 1 basis point.

In the final part of the session, Bloomberg reports about the possibility that the current US government will lift the export restrictions on AI chips introduced by the previous administration boosted the shares of semiconductor companies, including Nvidia (3.1%). Earlier, the market of technology companies was weakened by the decline of Alphabet (-7.3%), the owner of Google. It came after Eddy Cue, head of the services division at Apple (-1.1%), said that search engines based on artificial intelligence will eventually replace traditional ones, such as Google. He announced that Apple plans to add AI-based search options to its Safari browser, offered by OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic.

Until the Fed announced its decision on interest rates two hours before the end of the session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P500 remained “above the line” thanks in part to a significant increase in the Walt Disney Co. share price (10.8%). This was a reaction to the company’s better-than-expected quarterly report, mainly due to higher revenues from theme parks and an unexpected increase in the number of streaming service subscribers. Among the companies that disappointed was Uber Technologies (-2.5%). Its quarterly revenues did not reach the level forecasted by analysts.

Almost three quarters of S&P500 companies ended the session with a rise in value. Demand prevailed in 8 of the 11 main segments of the index. The biggest price increases were in suppliers of discretionary consumer goods (1.0%), IT companies (0.9%) and healthcare (0.8%). Supply prevailed in the segments of real estate companies (-0.02%), materials (-0.5%) and telecommunications services (-1.8%).

In the Dow Jones Industrial Average, 24 out of 30 companies rose. In addition to Walt Disney Co. (10.8%), the biggest gainers were Nvidia (3.1%) and Nike (2.8%). The biggest drop in price was Apple (-1.1%).

Less than 51% of companies on the Nasdaq Composite were up at closing. In the narrower Nasdaq 100, which gained 0.4%, 73 rose. In the "magnificent seven," most of the technology blue chips were also up. However, its index fell for the third session in a row, this time by 0.3%, which resulted from the scale of the decline in Alphabet shares (-7.3%).