[New York Stock Market] Nasdaq Hits All-Time High; Semiconductor Leveraged ETF SOXL Surges 15%

[Financial News]  

All three major U.S. stock indexes rose on the 21st (local time). The Nasdaq, in particular, broke its all-time high for the first time in about four months, since June 2. The index, which had struggled after AI stocks took a beating, recovered and surpassed its previous peak.
In particular, the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF (SOXL), a leveraged exchange-traded fund (ETF) comprising semiconductor stocks at the core of AI infrastructure, soared nearly 15%.
Technology stocks were strong as AI-related shares benefited from a favorable tailwind.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq, the three major U.S. stock indexes, all rose, either setting new all-time highs or moving close to record levels.
The Dow rose 366.19 points (0.71%) from the previous session to 52,048.83, while the S&P 500 gained 114.20 points (1.49%) to close at 7,764.70. The S&P 500 needs to rise just 34.29 points (0.44%) to reach its all-time high of 7,798.99, set on the 13th of last month.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq surged 599.55 points (2.26%) to 27,122.09. It surpassed the all-time high of 27,093.90 set in June.
The Nasdaq-100, which comprises 100 large technology companies, broke above 30,000. It soared 838.19 points (2.83%) to 30,482.35.
The ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ), an ETF that tracks the Nasdaq-100's daily movements at three times the rate, surged $6.27 (8.63%) to $78.91.

Semiconductor stocks led the day's gains.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) soared $55.70 (9.95%) to close at $615.52. Its market capitalization based on the closing price reached $1.005 trillion. It became the fourth U.S. semiconductor company to surpass a $1 trillion market capitalization, after NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Micron Technology.
AMD, which designs both GPUs (graphics processing units) for AI training and CPUs (central processing units) for inference, has surged more than 187% this year.
Intel surged $13.18 (12.14%) to $121.78, while Micron Technology rose $28.16 (2.77%) to $1,043.96.
NVIDIA, the sector leader, also gained $5.11 (2.30%) to close at $227.38.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) surged 511.49 points (4.29%) to 12,433.17, while SOXL, a leveraged semiconductor ETF that tracks the index, soared $18.26 (14.77%) to $141.93.

Big tech stocks also gained ground, buoyed by strength in AI-related shares.
Meta Platforms soared $76.02 (11.43%) to $741.24. Meta's AI agent, Meta Muse, overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT on Apple's U.S. App Store free-app chart and ranked No. 1 in the United States. The development served as a catalyst, fueling expectations that its astronomical AI investments are translating into profits and sending the stock sharply higher.
Alphabet rose $5.43 (1.55%) to $354.97, while Apple gained $2.85 (0.85%) to close at $338.98.
Palantir Technologies surged $5.45 (3.07%) to close at $183.09.
Meanwhile, Tesla rose $11.03 (3.03%) to $375.30 as anticipation built ahead of the unveiling of the Tesla Roadster electric sports car on the first of next month.

[email protected] Song Kyung-jae Reporter