alltime

The United States stock market has hit an all-time high as excitement around artificial intelligence continues to fuel a buying frenzy on Wall Street.

The S&P 500, the benchmark stock index, closed 0.58 percent higher on Tuesday, topping the previous peak reached in mid-August.

The Nasdaq Composite, which is more heavily weighted towards tech stocks, also hit a record high, finishing up 0.45 percent.

Tech stocks were among the top performers, with each of the “Magnificent Seven” apart from Meta closing higher.

Amazon led the pack with a 1.95 percent gain, followed by Microsoft and Tesla, which rose 0.78 percent and 0.51 percent, respectively.

Apple and Alphabet both rose 0.22 percent, while Nvidia gained 0.14 percent.

Meta, which has risen more than 20 percent since the launch last month of its new AI assistant, Muse, fell 0.41 percent.

Other big movers in tech included Marvell Technology, which rose 5.81 percent, and Cisco, which gained 4.54 percent.

Technology, AI

Keith Lerner, chief investment officer and chief market strategist at Truist Advisory Services in Atlanta, Georgia, said the market rally should be seen as a “technology and AI surge”.

“Every bull market has a dominant theme, and technology and AI remain this market’s dominant theme,” Lerner told Al Jazeera.

“Technology and communication services were the only two S&P 500 sectors to rise last month, while the other nine declined.”

Wall Street has shrugged off a host of challenges facing the US economy amid hyperscalers’ multibillion-dollar investments in AI.

Despite the energy crunch caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran and a sell-off of US government bonds partly driven by ballooning government debt, the market is well on track to record its fourth consecutive year of double-digit returns.

The S&P 500 has risen 14 percent so far in 2026, while the Nasdaq Composite is up 18.78 percent.

Lerner at Truist Advisory said the market rally had the potential to continue through the end of 2026 given historical trends and expectations for strong corporate earnings.

“We do not expect a straight line higher for markets,” Lerner said.

“Still, the fourth quarter of midterm-election years has produced an average gain of 7 percent and has been positive 84 percent of the time since 1950.”

Lerner said that rising interest rates posed the biggest risk to the upward trend.

“Still, on balance, the weight of the evidence suggests this bull market still has more upside potential,” he said.

Asian stock markets fell on Wednesday, with key indexes in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong slumping in morning trading.

The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo, Kospi in Seoul and Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong were down 0.79 percent, 1.36 percent and 0.71 percent, respectively, as of 02:30 GMT.

Oil prices, which have been elevated since the start of the war on Iran, rose on Wednesday as traders weighed the fallout of fighting between forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the Iran-aligned Houthis.

Brent crude futures for December delivery stood at $101.45 a barrel as of 02:30 GMT, up 0.87 percent.

Diesel prices have hit an all-time high of 199.18p per litre, according to the motoring organisation RAC, as the war in the Middle East continues to push up the cost of fuel.

Petrol prices are also still rising, with a litre currently costing 174.13p.

Over the past seven months, the Iran war has severely disrupted the production and transportation of wholesale oil across the region, causing the price of fuels made from oil to surge.

RAC said diesel prices had entered “uncharted territory” and served as a reminder of “just how exposed the UK is to events occurring far away”.

Investors shrug off AI safety concerns and Iran war, sending market to a new peak.

Wall Street’s Nasdaq stock exchange has hit an all-time high, shrugging off concerns about AI safety risks, sky-high tech valuations and the energy shock caused by the United States’ war on Iran.

The Nasdaq Composite index, which is dominated by US tech giants such as Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, rose 0.45 percent on Tuesday, taking its gains to date this year to more than 17 percent.

The Nasdaq 100, a narrower index that tracks 100 top companies, jumped 0.82 percent.

The S&P 500, the most popular measure of the overall US stock market, closed essentially flat.

Monolithic Power Systems, a Florida-based manufacturer of power circuits, and Canadian e-commerce company Shopify led the gains, surging 8.1 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively.

Micron Technology, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers along with South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, rose 5 percent.

Chip giant Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, gained 0.7 percent, while Apple edged up 0.2 percent.

Meta Platforms, which soared 11.4 percent on Monday on excitement surrounding its new AI assistant Muse, dropped 0.63 percent.

Major Asian stock markets opened higher on Wednesday, with Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi up about 1.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, in morning trading.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index opened lower, falling more than 0.7 percent during the morning trade.

Oil prices were largely flat on Tuesday, after falling more than 3 percent the previous day amid improving oil flows out of the Gulf and hopes of renewed diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.

Futures for Brent crude, the international benchmark, were trading at $99.18 a barrel as of 01:00 GMT.

⁠US President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters that US officials ‌held a “very good” meeting with their Iranian counterparts on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, hours after using his address to the session to warn that he could “annihilate” Iran if Tehran did not agree to a deal on the war.

Trump, whose war on Iran is nearing the seven-month mark, said US and Iranian officials would hold another round of talks in the “very near future”.

Jay Goldberg, a senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners in San Francisco, said signs of diplomatic progress between the US and Iran had refocused investor attention on the potential of AI to generate profits after years of multibillion-dollar investments.

“We have been searching for a clear consumer use case to justify the AI spend, and many see Muse as just that product,” Goldberg told Al Jazeera.

“Personally, I think Muse is just a step in the right direction; there will be better products – probably soon – but Muse is one of those things that are so useful they get investors excited about AI prospects again,” Goldberg said.