United States equity markets registered gains on Wednesday. At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 45,565 points, representing a 0.3 percent increase from the previous session.
The broader S&P 500 index finished the day at approximately 6,481 points, a gain of 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq 100 similarly increased by 0.2 percent, closing at around 23,567 points.
Investor focus was particularly on Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report, released Wednesday, following recent scrutiny of the potential of artificial intelligence. The chip designer has seen substantial market capitalization growth driven by the current surge in AI development and briefly became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. The report followed statements from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta’s recent pause in hiring for its AI division, as well as a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which questioned the overall return on investment for corporate AI projects-finding that only five percent demonstrably increase revenue.
In currency markets, the Euro saw a slight decrease in value, trading at 1.1635 US dollars. Conversely, one US dollar was worth 0.8595 Euros.
The price of gold experienced a marginal increase, closing at 3,396 US dollars per troy ounce, a gain of 0.1 percent – equivalent to 93.83 Euros per gram.
Oil prices also rose modestly, with Brent crude futures reaching 67.79 US dollars per barrel Wednesday evening, an increase of 57 cents, or 0.9 percent, from the previous day’s closing price.
