Wall Street closes higher as Dow, S&P hit one-week tops

By Abigail Summerville

(Reuters) -Wall Street's main indexes closed higher after choppy trading on Thursday, with the blue-chip Dow and the S&P 500 hitting one-week tops.

Dow Jones Industrial Average gains were aided by cloud company Salesforce's 3.1% advance after three brokerages lifted their price targets on the stock.

Shares of Wall Street's biggest company, Nvidia, added 0.5% after teetering following its earnings release on Wednesday. The chip company surpassed expectations for quarterly results, and projected fourth-quarter revenue above estimates.

"(Nvidia's) earnings report was really, really good. Some of the whisper numbers were higher and they disappointed there, but the fundamentals of AI and Nvidia continue to fire on all cylinders and the outlook for next year is positive," said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.

Some investors were unimpressed that the forecast was its slowest in seven quarters.

The broader Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index climbed 1.6%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 461.88 points, or 1.06%, to 43,870.35, the S&P 500 gained 31.60 points, or 0.53%, to 5,948.71 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 6.28 points, or 0.03%, to 18,972.42.

Alphabet slid 4.7% to touch a four-week low after the Justice Department argued to a judge that Google must sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its monopoly on online search.

The stock's losses weighed on the communication services sector, which was the biggest sectoral decliner, falling 1.73%. Utilities stocks led the S&P higher.

Amazon.com fell 2.2% after a report said it will likely face an EU investigation next year into whether it favors its own brand products on its online marketplace.

On the data front, a weekly report on jobless claims showed they fell unexpectedly last week, suggesting a rebound in job growth in November.

Investors will be closely monitoring commentary from Federal Reserve officials before the mid-December FOMC meeting.

Money-market bets favor a 25-basis-point interest rate cut by the Fed in December, according to the CME Group's FedWatch.

"We’ve moved on from the election a bit, we got the Nvidia report, so the next thing markets will look for is the Fed meeting, and some policy speak from Fed officials this week have pointed to maybe a pause in the making for December," Saglimbene said.

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin said the United States is more vulnerable to inflationary shocks than in the past, according to a media report.

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said on Thursday he supports further interest rate cuts and is open to doing them more slowly.

Traders also monitored geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia that sent crude prices higher and aided a 0.8% gain in the energy sector.

Shares of machinery manufacturer Deere gained 8% after reporting an upbeat fourth-quarter profit, while AI company Snowflake jumped 32.7% after raising its annual product revenue forecast.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 3.17-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 380 new highs and 88 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,875 stocks rose and 1,444 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.99-to-1 ratio. The S&P 500 posted 67 new 52-week highs and four new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 138 new highs and 149 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 15.32 billion shares, compared with the 14.55-billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

(Reporting by Abigail Summerville in New York; additional reporting by Purvi Agarwal and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Rod Nickel)

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