NEW YORK (AP) — More gains for Nvidia, Amazon and other artificial intelligence superstars propped up Wall Street on Monday.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and approached its all-time high set last week, even as most stocks in the index sank. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 226 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.5%.
Nvidia was the strongest force driving the S&P 500, as it has been so far this year. The chip company rose 2.2% to bring its year-to-date profit to 54.1%.
Amazon was the second force driving the market higher. It rose 4% after announcing a $38 billion deal with OpenAI, which will use Amazon’s cloud computing services to run its AI workloads.
IREN, a provider of cloud AI services, rose 11.5% after Microsoft announced a $9.7 billion deal that will give the tech giant access to some of Nvidia’s chips.
Palantir Technologies, which came into the day with a staggering 165% year-to-date gain, rose another 3.3%. Traders pushed the AI favorite higher in the final hours before the data platform company reported its latest quarterly results after the close of trading for the day.
Companies across the U.S. stock market will have to meet earnings growth expectations to justify the big gains in their stock prices since April. Criticism has grown that the U.S. market in general, and AI stocks in particular, have become too expensive and could be inflating into a dangerous bubble similar to the dot-com crisis in 2000.
For the most part, companies have met high earnings expectations. According to FactSet, four out of five S&P 500 companies have beaten analyst forecasts so far this reporting season. With about two-thirds of all S&P 500 reporting, companies in the index are on track to achieve healthy growth of nearly 11% compared to the previous year.
On the losing side of Wall Street on Monday was Kimberly-Clark, which fell 14.6% after saying it would buy Kenvue in a deal that valued it at $48.7 billion. Kenvue, which sells Tylenol, Band-Aids and Listerine, rose 12.3%.
Beyond Meat fell 16% after the plant-based meat company delayed its fourth-quarter earnings report to Nov. 11 from Tuesday. He said he needs more time to evaluate how large a non-cash charge he will take because of problems he had previously disclosed with some of his assets.
Beyond Meat shares have mostly been falling since topping $4 in July, but last month they had a wild ride where they suddenly skyrocketed from 52 cents to $3.62 in three days, an increase of nearly 600%. He got caught up in the “meme stock” trend, where prices can rise solely due to online advertising and not any change in the company’s actual business.