Tech leads market near records while D.C.'s shutdown stalls jobs data

"U.S. stocks are drifting around their records on Thursday as technology stocks keep rising and as Wall Street keeps ignoring the shutdown of the U.S. government. The S&P 500 rose 0.1%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 68 points, or 0.2%, as of 1:58 p.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher and hovering above its own record."

"That increases uncertainty when much on Wall Street is riding on investors' hopes that the job market will slow by a precise amount: enough to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates, but not by so much that it leads to a recession. "The Fed has been on record that they are very data dependent, and the lack of data from public sources is likely to be problematic," said Brian Rehling, head of global fixed-income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute."

U.S. equity indexes hovered near all-time highs with modest gains in the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq as technology stocks led advances. A federal government shutdown delayed the weekly jobless-claims report and likely the monthly payrolls report, heightening uncertainty because the Federal Reserve remains data dependent. Some strategists warned the absence of public data could be problematic for policy decisions. Markets so far have largely looked past shutdown risks and focused on corporate developments. Chip and AI-related stocks rallied after OpenAI announced South Korean partnerships for the Stargate project, boosting Samsung and SK Hynix.

Read at Fast Company