Nvidia leads Nasdaq and S&P to record high closes

STORY: In what has become the major market theme, shares of Nvidia and other tech heavyweights helped push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to more record high closes on Wednesday.

All three of Wall Street's main indexes gained more than one percent.

It was the Nasdaq's seventh straight record-high close and the S&P 500's sixth straight.

The S&P crossed 5,600 for the first time after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stoked expectations for an interest-rate cut in September during his congressional testimony.

Baird Investment Strategist Ross Mayfield said he was encouraged to see that with inflation pressures easing, Powell is now showing concerns about a weakening labor market.

"You wanna see signs that the Fed is at least acknowledging, if not explicitly starting to cut rates tomorrow, that the labor market weakness is something they're concerned about. That it's no longer a major pressure on inflation, which I don't think it is, and it opens the door to not just September but additional rate cuts later this year and early next year."

The data-dependent Fed will parse the latest inflation reports with Thursday's Consumer Price Index, followed by the Producer Price Index on Friday.

In company news, chip stocks jumped after Taiwan Semiconductor posted strong quarterly revenue, its shares rising 3.5%.

Micron Technology jumped 4%, Nvidia climbed more than 2.5% and Advanced Micro Devices added nearly 4%.

Intuit dropped more than 2.5% after the TurboTax owner said it plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce.

And shares of Apple climbed nearly 2% to a record high, lifting its stock market value to $3.6 trillion.