The “Magnificent Seven” index closed within a hair of a record high, while Apple joins the list with its first all-time closing high of the year. Meanwhile, Amazon notches its seventh, and Alphabet its fourteenth.

Interestingly, tech remains the only large-cap and small-cap sector hitting new highs recently.

Here are today’s record closing highs:

Indexes: Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), S&P 500 (^GSPC), Nasdaq 100 (^NDX), Russell 2000 (^RUT), PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX), S&P MidCap 400 (^MID), S&P SmallCap 600 (^SP600)

Dow Jones Sectors/Industries: Large-Cap Technology, Electronic Equipment, Construction & Materials, Computer Hardware, Consumer Cyclical, Consumer Services, Electrical Components & Equipment, Electronic & Electrical, General Retailers, Commercial Vehicles/Trucks, Heavy Construction, Industrials, Industrial Engineering, Internet Services, Publishing, Retailer, Broadline, Retail, Semiconductors, Steel, Technology, Technology TR, Tech Hardware & Equipment

Large-cap sector ETFs: Technology (XLK)

Small-cap sector ETFs: Small-cap tech (PSCT)

Industry/Style/Country ETFs: ACWI ex US (ACWX), Emerging markets (EEM), Netherlands (EWN), Taiwan (EWT), South Korea (EWY), Memory (DRAM), Micro-cap (IWC), Mega cap (MGC), Momentum (MTUM), Semiconductors (SMH, SOXX, XSD), High Beta (SPHB), Value (VLUE)

Consumer discretionary stocks: Amazon (AMZN), Ross Stores (ROST)

Health care stocks: DaVita (DVA)

Financial stocks: Cboe (CBOE), Globe Life (GL), Interactive Brokers (IBKR), Morgan Stanley (MS), Principal Financial (PFG)

Industrial stocks: Caterpillar (CAT), Cummins (CMI), EMCOR (EME), Comfort Systems (FIX), Jabil (JBL), Powell Industries (POWL), Quanta Services (PWR), Rockwell Automation (ROK)

Materials stocks: Nucor (NUE), Steel Dynamics (STLD)

Real estate stocks: Iron Mountain (IRM)

Communication services stocks: Alphabet (GOOGL)

Tech stocks: Apple (AAPL), Analog Devices (ADI), Applied Materials (AMAT), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Arm (ARM), ASML (ASML), ASE Technology (ASX), Corning (GLW), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Ichor (ICHR), ChipMOS (IMOS), Intel (INTC), Keysight (KEYS), Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC), Lam Research (LRCX), Microchip Technology (MCHP), MKS Instruments (MKSI), Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR), Marvell Technology (MRVL), MACOM (MTSI), Micron (MU), NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), SMART Global (PENG), Qnity Electronics (Q), Silicon Motion (SIMO), SiTime (SITM), Semtech (SMTC), Sandisk (SNDK), STMicroelectronics (STM), Seagate (STX), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), Texas Instruments (TXN), Ultra Clean (UCTT), United Microelectronics (UMC), Veeco (VECO), Vishay Intertechnology (VSH), Western Digital (WDC), Wolfspeed (WOLF)

Stocks climbed to fresh record highs on Wednesday as the AI trade took a leg higher.

The tech-exposed Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rallied 2%. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) jumped roughly 1.3%, or about 600 points.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) increased 1.5%, following fresh record closes for Wall Street stocks.

Semiconductor stocks soared after AMD reported strong guidance citing server CPU demand for AI workloads.

The chip sector has led the broader tech rally, fueled by investor enthusiasm around AI infrastructure spending.

Yahoo Finance’s Brooke DiPalma reports:

McDonald’s (MCD) is expected to report first quarter earnings before the market opens on Thursday, following strong 7% same-store sales growth in the previous quarter.

Wall Street expects McDonald’s US same-store sales to grow for the fourth straight quarter, with a 3.9% increase in Q1, per Bloomberg consensus data. However, poor weather, lapping the successful Minecraft Movie Meal promotion, higher beef costs, and the impact of the US-Iran conflict on consumer behavior may drag on the quarter.

Heading into the print, the stock is down 7% year to date, compared to the S&P 500’s (^GSPC) 7% gain.

Read more here.

GameStop chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen struck a humorous tone regarding his bid to acquire online marketplace eBay on Wednesday afternoon.

Cohen shared a social media post linking to GameStop collectible items on the online marketplace, writing, “I’m selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay.”

The collectibles include 1990s-era Nintendo games and a range of baseball cards. All of the items attracted multiple bids, with prices ranging from the $500s to more than $11,000 for a GameStop store sign.

The post comes after investors raised questions about how GameStop’s $56 billion bid to acquire eBay would materialize, given the amount of cash on the video game retailer’s balance sheet relative to the size of eBay.

Investor Michael Burry said he exited GameStop on Monday night, selling his entire position in GME.

Strategists are pointing to earnings as the No. 1 driver of the stock market as stocks were on track to notch fresh records on Wednesday.

“All-time highs for the S&P 500 and other markets can make investors nervous, especially when the path has been a rapid V-shaped recovery,” wrote Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, CIO Americas at UBS Chief Investment Office, in a client note.

“We think what matters more is whether earnings expectations continue to rise and whether policy remains supportive,” she added.

UBS researchers noted that data dating back to 1960 shows that hitting a record high has not typically meant weaker forward returns for the S&P 500.

On average, the S&P 500 returned 11.8% over the next 12 months and 22.8% over the next two years after an all-time high, versus 12% and 25%, respectively, when trading below a record high.

Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) futures trimmed earlier gains but still rose more than 2.5% and 5%, respectively, on Wednesday.

Investors were assessing an Axios report that the US believes it’s close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum to end the war.

Read more here.

The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) is barely a month old, and traders are already treating it like the memory boom’s new trading vehicle.

DRAM has traded just 24 sessions, but it’s already up over 70% and has hit an intraday record on 14 of them.

That’s a wild launch — and a reflection of where the AI chip trade has been moving. Strategas ETF Research notes the Bloomberg Global Memory Index is up almost 500% over the past year, meaning DRAM is not inventing the trade so much as giving US investors a cleaner ticker for it.

The ETF is not a broad semiconductor fund. Its top holdings are the memory supply chain itself, led by Micron (MU), SK Hynix, Samsung, Sandisk (SNDK), Seagate (STX), and Western Digital (WDC). It also solves a practical problem for US investors: Samsung and SK Hynix are central to the memory trade, but neither has an easy-to-buy US-listed ADR.

That makes DRAM the new shortcut for a trade that has already been showing up in individual stocks. Micron has nearly doubled since the March 30 market low, while Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate have joined the AI memory and storage run.

The chart is so young that there’s barely a 20-day moving average available, so the trend line is the tell for now. DRAM keeps riding a launch ramp that’s getting steeper by the week, which makes the first hard reversal more important than usual.

A break below the main trend line — or a big bearish reversal candle — would give the parabolic memory trade its first real test in ETF form.

The war in Iran has sent crude oil — and therefore gasoline — prices surging. On Wednesday, the national average price for Americans to fill up their cars was $4.53 per gallon, per AAA.

How those price hikes are affecting Americans is split along the K-shaped dynamic in the overall US economy right now, according to economists at the New York Fed.

“Households had very different experiences with gasoline spending,” the economists wrote.

Lower-income households tend to be more exposed to energy price hikes because spending on electricity, gasoline, and other energy-intensive necessities takes up a larger share of their income, according to Bank of America.

The left-hand chart above shows nominal gasoline spending, which has spiked since the war in Iran began raising crude oil prices in late February and early March, while the chart on the right shows real growth in gasoline consumption.

Low-income households have seen the lowest increase in nominal gas spending because they have cut down their consumption by the largest margin. Conversely, high-income households have seen the largest jump in spending because they have done the least to reduce their consumption.

The US stock market is having one of its best earnings seasons in 20 years, according to data compiled by Deutsche Bank economists.

Roughly 85% of reporting S&P 500 companies have exceeded profit expectations, while about 77% have delivered upside revenue surprises. On a blended basis, more than 80% of companies have exceeded estimates, Deutsche Bank found.

Looking deeper into the market, all 11 top-level sectors are expected to show year-on-year earnings growth for the first time in four years, Deutsche Bank said. Even as the war in Iran has roiled energy markets, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) have rallied to record highs.

The White House is reportedly considering an executive order that would create a vetting system for new frontier artificial intelligence models, such as Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Mythos, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said Wednesday.

“We’re studying, possibly an executive order to give a clear roadmap to everybody about how this is going to go and how future AIs that also potentially create vulnerabilities should go through a process so that they’re released to the wild after they’ve been proven safe, just like an FDA drug,” Hassett told Fox Business, as reported by Bloomberg.

The news comes as Anthropic’s newest Mythos model has sparked widespread cybersecurity concerns about AI’s vulnerability to exploitation and the ability to penetrate supposedly secure infrastructure. Mythos is reportedly capable of exploiting and gaining access to high-level security systems.

Hassett’s comments come after news that Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and xAI have all agreed to give the US government early access to their leading AI models for security testing and research, according to an announcement from the Commerce Department on Tuesday.

The Commerce Department has had similar agreements in place with OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) to pre-evaluate their models since August 2024.

Tech and semis are still stealing the show, but the artificial intelligence trade is reaching into the plumbing too.

Corning (GLW) jumped to a fresh intraday high after announcing a long-term Nvidia (NVDA) partnership to expand US optical connectivity capacity for AI data centers, reminding investors that artificial intelligence picks and shovels is sometimes an industrial and materials trade too.

Here are this morning’s intraday record highs:

Indexes: Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), S&P 500 (^GSPC), Nasdaq 100 (^NDX), Russell 2000 (^RUT), PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX), S&P MidCap 400 (^MID), S&P SmallCap 600 (^SP600)

Dow Jones Sectors/Industries: Large-Cap Technology, Electronic Equipment, Construction & Materials, Electrical Components & Equipment, Electronic & Electrical, Commercial Vehicles/Trucks, Heavy Construction, Industrial Engineering, Internet Services, Publishing, Semiconductors, Steel, Technology, Technology TR, Tech Hardware & Equipment

Large-cap sector ETFs: Technology (XLK)

Small-cap sector ETFs: Small-cap tech (PSCT)

Industry/Style/Country ETFs: ACWI ex US (ACWX), Emerging markets (EEM), Netherlands (EWN), Taiwan (EWT), South Korea (EWY), Semiconductors (FTXL), Micro-cap (IWC), Mega cap (MGC), Momentum (MTUM), Semiconductors (SMH), Semiconductors (SOXX), High Beta (SPHB), Value (VLUE)

Healthcare stocks: DaVita (DVA)

Financial stocks: Globe Life (GL), Interactive Brokers (IBKR), Morgan Stanley (MS), Principal Financial (PFG)

Industrial stocks: Caterpillar (CAT), Cummins (CMI), Comfort Systems (FIX), Jabil (JBL), Matson (MATX), Powell Industries (POWL), Quanta Services (PWR), Rockwell Automation (ROK)

Materials stocks: Corning (GLW), Nucor (NUE), Steel Dynamics (STLD)

Real estate stocks: Iron Mountain (IRM)

Communication services stocks: Alphabet (GOOGL)

Tech stocks: Analog Devices (ADI), Applied Materials (AMAT), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), ASE Technology (ASX), Broadcom (AVGO), AXT (AXTI), Dell (DELL), Diodes (DIOD), ChipMOS (IMOS), Intel (INTC), Keysight (KEYS), Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC), Lam Research (LRCX), Marvell Technology (MRVL), MACOM (MTSI), Micron (MU), SMART Global (PENG), Photronics (PLAB), Qnity Electronics (Q), SiTime (SITM), Semtech (SMTC), Sandisk (SNDK), Tower Semiconductor (TSEM), Ultra Clean (UCTT), United Microelectronics (UMC), Veeco (VECO), Vishay Intertechnology (VSH), Wolfspeed (WOLF)

The AI boom is giving old-school chips a new moment.

AMD (AMD) and Intel (INTC) are both seeing fresh demand for CPUs, the central processors that run general-purpose software and help coordinate work across a computer system.

GPUs are still the high-powered chips doing much of the AI math. But CPUs are becoming more important as AI moves from answering prompts to taking actions.

That is the shift behind the emerging “CPU comeback” story: AI agents need to use tools, move data, call apps, and complete tasks — and that requires more chips to manage the workflow, not just crunch the model.

AMD stock rose about 15% early Wednesday, putting it on track for its best day in roughly seven months, after the company beat Wall Street’s expectations and gave a stronger-than-expected outlook. Its data center revenue jumped 57% from a year ago, helped by demand for both AI accelerators and server processors. Intel delivered results last week that told a similar story.

Wedbush analysts called out the change directly, writing that “CPUs stole the headlines,” even as AMD’s data center GPU demand also came in better than expected.

The next test comes on May 20, when Nvidia reports results. The question is whether the GPU king confirms the trade is moving deeper into the rack.

The US stock market rose on Wednesday following reports of a potential deal between the US and Iran, coupled with a continued solid earnings season.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) held onto gains of roughly 0.8% after initially popping higher, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose roughly 0.7% and 0.9%, respectively.

Oil prices fell sharply on Wednesday morning on an Axios report that the US could be close to a framework for a deal with Iran to end the war.

On the corporate calendar, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) stock gained 15% after beating earnings forecast, while Supermicro (SMCI) rose 17% after issuing strong guidance. Walt Disney (DIS) also reported a beat on Wednesday morning.

Data released Wednesday morning from payroll data provider ADP showed that the US added 109,000 private-sector jobs in April. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas will report layoffs data for the month on Thursday.

Oil prices plunged on Wednesday morning on news that the US and Iran may be within striking distance of a deal to end the war in Iran that has wracked the global energy market.

Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international benchmark, fell by as much as 11% to briefly dip below $100 per barrel before regaining the level, after only a week ago crossing $126 per barrel. Contracts on US benchmark WTI crude (CL=F) lost as much as 11.3% to trade below $91 per barrel before paring losses.

The drop in oil prices comes after Axios reported that Washington and Tehran may be close to reaching an agreement to end the war — now in its third month — and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Bloomberg and Reuters reported similar information.

Key provisions of the deal in progress include a moratorium on Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program, US agreements to lift sanctions on Iran and release billions of dollars in frozen funds, and commitments from both sides to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow commercial traffic to restart, Axios reported.

Iran is expected to respond to the US proposal through mediator Pakistan within the next two days, Bloomberg reported.

US private employers added 109,000 jobs in April in the largest monthly gain since January 2025, payroll processor ADP said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected an increase of 120,000 roles after February and March each posted an excess of 60,000 positions. ADP’s report may build on the sentiment that the labor market is showing some signs of stability after a bleak 2025.

“Small and large employers are hiring, but we’re seeing softness in the middle,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement.

“Large companies have resources to deploy, and small ones are the most nimble, both important advantages in a complex labor environment.”