S&P 500 hits record high as rate-hike worries ease

The S&P 500 climbed to a record high on Thursday, fueled by advances in Sandisk and other heavyweight technology stocks, as tame producer price inflation data supported expectations the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates at its September meeting. Memory chip makers Sandisk and Micron Technology surged 16 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively. Broadcom added 1.3 percent and Meta Platforms rose 2.8 percent. Strong forecasts in recent weeks from companies including Microsoft and Amazon have reduced investors' concerns about massive spending on AI data centers. Shares of AI cloud company CoreWeave were flat on Thursday. CoreWeave surged 19 percent a day earlier after lifting its annual capital spending forecast. "The AI earnings-driven tech boom continues," said Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors in New York. "It's an earnings boom, not a bubble." The S&P 500 was up 0.56 percent at 7,791.70 points, off an earlier all-time high of 7,816.70. The Nasdaq gained 0.73 percent to 26,782.15 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.01 percent at 53,766.27 p