Amazon's AI-Fueled Rally Lifts Wall Street as Fed Caution Tempers Gains

Amazon's record-breaking surge powered major indexes higher, while Powell's cautious Fed tone cooled rate-cut hopes. Tech led the charge, gold dipped and Asia showed mixed results.

The Nasdaq climbed 143.81 points (0.6%) to 23,724.96, the S&P 500 rose 17.86 points (0.3%) to 6,840.20 and the Dow inched up 40.75 points (0.1%) to 47,562.87.

Wall Street kicked off with strong momentum, led by Amazons stunning 9.6% surge after reporting stellar third-quarter results. The company hit a record high as booming demand for AI-driven cloud computing powered its AWS division, overshadowing its e-commerce arm and restoring investor confidence in its growth dominance.

Meanwhile, Netflix also climbed after announcing a ten-for-one stock split, but Apple slipped despite beating forecasts, as traders digested mixed signals from the Fed. Chair Jerome Powells cautious remarks cooled hopes for another rate cut in December, sending market odds for that move tumbling from nearly 92% to 65%.

Retail stocks turned in a strong performance amid the surge by Amazon, with the Dow Jones U.S. Retail Index spiking by 4%. Airline stocks displayed significant strength, as reflected by the 2.7% surge by the NYSE Arca Airline Index. Biotechnology, computer hardware and brokerage stocks too was considerably strong while gold stocks moved notably lower amid a decrease by the price of the precious metal.

Asia-Pacific stocks turned in a mixed performance. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index surged by 2.1% while China's Shanghai Composite Index slid by 0.8% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index tumbled by 1.4%. Meanwhile, the major European markets all moved to the downside on the day while the German DAX Index is down by 0.6%, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index is down by 0.5% and the French CAC 40 Index is down by 0.4%.

In the bond market, treasuries showed a lack of direction over the course of the session before closing roughly flat. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note which moves opposite of its price, crept up by less than a basis point to 4.10%.

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