By Shashwat Chauhan and Purvi Agarwal
(Reuters) – Wall Street's main indexes rose on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq and Nasdaq hitting record highs boosted by gains in technology stocks, as investors awaited comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. later that day.
U.S. private payrolls rose at a moderate pace in November, the ADP National Employment Report showed, increasing by 146,000 jobs after advancing by a downwardly revised 184,000 in October.
“There's been a lot of noise in the jobs numbers because of the distortions in the economy and the correlation between the ADP and the nonfarm payrolls numbers, which is really important for the outlook and for Fed policy,” Zachary said. Hill, portfolio manager. management at Horizon Investments.
“I really don't think the markets are going to focus on the ADP report today.”
The data comes ahead of the highly anticipated November monthly employment report, which will be released on Friday.
Separately, data from the Institute for Supply Management showed non-manufacturing activity stood at 52.1 last month, while the final reading from the S&P services survey was revised down to 56.1.
At 10:03 a.m., the S&P 500 gained 16.50 points, or 0.27%, to 6,066.38 and gained 132.66 points, or 0.68%, to 19,613.57.
The CBOE Market Volatility Index, Wall Street's gauge of fear, briefly fell below 13 points for the first time since July 2024.
Salesforce (NYSE provided the biggest boost to the Dow Jones, jumping 8.5% after the enterprise cloud company beat Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and raised the lower end of its annual revenue forecast.
Information technology stocks hit an all-time high, boosted by gains from mega-caps like Microsoft (NASDAQ and Nvidia (NASDAQ ).
Marvell (NASDAQ technology rose 21.2% after the chipmaker forecast fourth-quarter revenue above analyst estimates, while the broader semiconductor index rose 1%.
The market's focus remains on Powell's comments, due later in the day, while the central bank's Beige Book, its survey report on U.S. economic activity, is scheduled for release at 2 :00 pm Eastern Time.
St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem spoke that day, joining other Fed officials this week in signaling support for further interest rate cuts, but none pushed strongly for or against another reduction at the next Fed meeting in two weeks.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted all-time closing highs on Tuesday, as technology-related stocks continued to rise during the turbulent session.
U.S. stocks had a strong November after President-elect Donald Trump won the Nov. 5 election and his Republican Party swept both houses of Congress.
Dollar Tree (NASDAQ rose 1.5% after the discount store operator beat third-quarter sales estimates, while drug maker Eli Lilly (NYSE rose 1.4% after its weight loss medication Zepbound surpassed its rival Wegovy in a head-to-head study.
Issues that rose outnumbered those that fell by a ratio of 1.05 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange and 1.3 to 1 on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 20 new 52-week highs and four new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite posted 83 new highs and 49 new lows.
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