Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the stories behind them.
Equity indexes pushed higher Friday even as a rate hike moved from probable to essentially certain, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining one point three percent, the S and P five hundred up one point one, and the Dow adding a full one percent. Markets appear to be pricing in the hike as a signal of underlying economic resilience rather than a brake on growth.
Shifting to the tech space, Nvidia continues to pull away from the field in the race for market capitalization supremacy, outpacing Apple and Microsoft as its revenue growth trajectory remains in a class of its own. Analysts argue the gap will only widen as AI infrastructure spending accelerates through the back half of this decade.
And on the AI demand front, OpenAI has temporarily paused new sign-ups for its two hundred dollar monthly ChatGPT tier after what the company called unprecedented demand for its newly launched Astra model. OpenAI president Greg Brockman described Astra's release as the opening of the AGI era, and the strain on compute capacity suggests the market believes him.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
