Shenzhen Business Daily · Reading and Innovation Client Reporter Qiu Qingyue
As of the close of Friday Eastern Time, the Nasdaq rose 1.25% to 15990.66 points, reaching a new high since November 2021; The S&P 500 index rose 0.57% to 5026.61 points, continuing to reach a new historical closing high; The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.14% to close at 38671.69 points. The news of Nvidia's entry into the custom chip field has driven the semiconductor sector to rise among the top, with a cumulative increase of 9.03% last week, and a total market value of $1.782 trillion approaching Amazon and Google.
At present, Microsoft's market value exceeds $3.12 trillion, breaking the record set by Apple last year and becoming a new historical high for the market value of American companies. It is reported that on June 30, 2023, Apple's market value reached $3.05 trillion, becoming the world's first company to exceed $3 trillion in market value.
According to reports, Nvidia is establishing a new business unit focused on designing custom chips and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors for companies such as cloud computing. Two sources said that Nvidia executives have met with representatives from Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI to discuss manufacturing custom chips for them. In addition to data center chips, Nvidia is also looking for customers from the telecommunications, automotive, and video gaming industries. Nvidia has risen 45.66% so far this year, and its latest total market value is approaching Amazon's total market value. Chip design company Arm also performed well last week, with a close of nearly 48% increase on Thursday and a weekly cumulative increase of 62.27% after releasing its financial report.
The Federal Reserve concluded its two-day monetary policy meeting on January 31st, announcing that it will maintain the target range of the federal funds rate between 5.25% and 5.5%, and hinted that it will not cut interest rates temporarily. Powell stated that the Federal Reserve should "carefully address the issue of when to cut interest rates" by anchoring a 2% inflation target, neither too fast nor too slow. "We need to balance the two risks," but we will not wait until the inflation rate does indeed drop to 2% before lowering interest rates. Moreover, the rate cut may not be high, at 25 or 50 basis points each time. The first interest rate cut is most likely in the middle of this year.