Post-Bell | Wall St Closes with Records. Crypto Stocks Jump, Circle Soars 16%, BMNR Jumps 8%, Coinbase up 7%; AMD, Alibaba up 3.5%; Tesla Falls 5%

Wall Street's three major indexes marked record closing highs with modest gains on Thursday, largely thanks to support from the technology sector, while investors cautiously monitored private labor market data on the second day of a U.S. government shutdown.

Market Snapshot

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 78.62 points, or 0.17%, to 46,519.72. The S&P 500 gained 4.15 points, or 0.06%, to 6,715.35 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 88.89 points, or 0.39%, to 22,844.05. AST SpaceMobile, Inc. up 16%; NEBIUS up 9%; Alibaba up 4%.

Market Movers

Crypto stocks jumped as Bitcoin rose to $120K, and Ethereum rallied to $4,470. Canaan Inc. up 27%; Circle Internet Corp. up 16%; Bullish, Upexi, Inc. up 12%; BitMine Immersion Technologies Inc. up 8%; Coinbase Global, Inc. up 7%; Robinhood up 5%.

Tesla was down 5.1%. The electric-vehicle maker delivered 497,099 cars in the third quarter, up 29% from 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter and up 7.4% from 462,890 vehicles in the third quarter of 2024. For the year through September, Tesla has delivered 1,217,902 cars, down 5.9% in the same span of 2024.

Rivian Automotive fell 7.4%. The EV maker's third-quarter deliveries of 13,201 vehicles rose nearly 32% from the prior year and were above analysts' estimates of 12,000. The company narrowed its full-year guidance to between 41,500 and 43,500 deliveries, compared with a previous range of 40,000 to 46,000 units.

Occidental was down 7.3% after the oil-and-gas company agreed to sell its chemical division, OxyChem, for $9.7 billion in cash to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire's Class B shares slipped 0.5%.

Fermi Inc. was down 12% to $28.78 after closing up nearly 55% to $32.53 in the Nasdaq-listed stock's trading debut Wednesday. Fermi's initial public offering was priced late Tuesday at $21 a share. The company aims to power AI data centers with natural gas plants and nuclear reactors.

Nvidia, the leading maker of artificial-intelligence chips, rose 0.9% to hit a fresh closing high. Shares of the chip maker have risen nearly 41% so far this year, amid several recent deals with companies like OpenAI and Intel.

Kodiak Robotics was up 15% at $6.83. Soros Fund Management acquired a 5.7% passive stake in the artificial-intelligence company.

Bullish gained 12%. The cryptocurrency-exchange operator said it would be adding crypto options trading to its platform on Oct. 8. Shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in August and gained 84% in their first day.

Rigetti Computing was up 19% at $35.41. The stock traded as high as $35.81 on Thursday, marking an intraday record. Shares have rallied since Tuesday, when Rigetti announced that it secured purchase orders worth a total $5.7 million for two quantum computing systems. Peers D-Wave Quantum and IONQ Inc. were up 14% and 10%, respectively, on Thursday.

Market News

AMD Leads Semiconductor Stocks Higher as Major AI Investments Continue to Mount

Most semiconductor stocks edged up by the close of trading on Thursday as news of major investments in artificial intelligence continues to pour in seemingly every day.

Advanced Micro Devices shares increased 3.5%. On Wednesday, AMD entered into a multi-year agreement with IBM and Zyphra. IBM plans to deliver a large cluster of AMD Instinct MI300X graphics processing units, or GPUs, on IBM Cloud for Zyphra to use for training frontier multimodal foundation models. Intel reportedly is engaged in early discussions with AMD to add the company as a potential customer for its nascent foundry business.

NVIDIA ticked up 0.9%. A report today about an agreement between Microsoft (MSFT) and the neocloud company Nebius (NBIS) highlighted plans to use more than 100,000 of Nvidia's latest GB300 GPUs. Intel, which has been at the center of a whirlwind of investment news and rumors, climbed 3.8%.

Elon Musk's $1 Trillion Pay Plan Faces Pushback from Investors, State Officials

A group of Tesla Motors shareholders including SOC Investment Group and several state officials urged investors to vote against Elon Musk's $1 trillion pay package at the company's November meeting, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday.

In the letter to Tesla shareholders, the coalition - which also includes state treasurers of Nevada, New Mexico and Connecticut - called on investors to oppose the re-election of directors Ira Ehrenpreis, Joe Gebbia and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson.