Dow Jumps 624 Points as Treasury Yields Ease: Stock Market Today

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Stocks jumped out of the gate Thursday and kept climbing into the close as market participants cheered easing Treasury yields and pulled back their rate-hike bets.

Strong gains for several mega-cap stocks also kept the wind at the market's back, with Tesla (TSLA) soaring ahead of its Cybercab event and Nvidia (NVDA) jumping on its $13 billion purchase of Hugging Face.

At the close, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.2% at 53,686, the broader S&P 500 was 1.1% higher at 7,747, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.4% to 26,584.

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Helping boost stocks was commentary from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, who said during a moderated discussion that while inflation is "meaningfully above" the central bank's 2% target, he is "seeing some signs of disinflation."

If this trend continues, Waller said he "would be inclined to hold the target for the federal funds rate at its current setting." He added, however, that if the trend does not continue, "a small adjustment" to interest rates may be necessary.

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The relatively dovish take was enough to send yields on the 2-year Treasury (-4.6 basis points to 4.34%) and 10-year Treasury (-2.2 basis points to 4.772%) lower.

The odds of a September rate hike dropped too. According to CME Group FedWatch, futures traders are now pricing in a 50% probability that the Fed will hike rates by a quarter-percentage point later this month, down from 63% one day ago.

Tesla, Nvidia pop; Broadcom drops

Tesla was one of several mega-cap stocks that closed higher Thursday, with shares climbing 5.4% ahead of the electric vehicle maker's Cybercab event in Austin, Texas, where it will debut its two-seater robotaxi.

Nvidia, meanwhile, rose 1.8% after the artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker confirmed it will buy open-source AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion — its second-largest acquisition ever.

"For Nvidia, the acquisition will provide a direct view into which models, architectures and development tools are gaining traction," wrote Kiplinger contributor Tom Taulli last week when rumors of the deal first surfaced. "Those insights could help NVDA optimize its chips, libraries and cloud services for emerging workloads."

But not all mega caps gained ground today. Broadcom (AVGO), for one, slumped 2.7% after the chipmaker reported its fiscal third-quarter results. While AVGO beat on the top and bottom lines, it forecast fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $34.8 billion, below the $35.03 billion analysts are expecting.

Snowflake soars nearly 17% after earnings

Elsewhere on the earnings calendar, Snowflake (SNOW) surged 16.6% after the cloud-based data platform blew past Wall Street's earnings-per-share and revenue estimates for its fiscal 2027 second quarter.

"Demand for SNOW's new AI products — CoCo and Snowflake CoWork — was robust" and "guidance was impressive," says Mizuho Americas analyst Gregg Moskowitz. "We continue to believe healthy consumption activity, along with secular trends driving enterprises to modernize their data estates, set up SNOW for sustained momentum."

Moskowitz adds that the company has several positive catalysts "that will be additive to growth," including new AI products and improving go-to-market technology. He calls SNOW "a top pick."

Snowflake's post-earnings pop lifted several software stocks on Thursday, including Salesforce (CRM, +2.9%) and ServiceNow (NOW, +6.5%).

Campbell's slashes its dividend

Campbell's (CPB), meanwhile, slumped 7% after the packaged foods company reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $2.14 billion, below analysts' estimates, as consumers shop for lower-priced items.

And while earnings per share were in line with Wall Street's expectations, the company said it expects revenue and earnings to be down in fiscal 2027.

Campbell's CEO Mick Beekhuizen called the results "unacceptable" and said the company is "taking decisive action to improve it." Part of this includes a 36% cut to its quarterly dividend, which will help reduce debt on its balance sheet.

The choice to cut the dividend was "difficult," Beekhuizen said, but also "a necessary decision that we needed to take."

The consumer staples stock is now down more than 20% for the year to date.

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With over a decade of experience writing about the stock market, Karee Venema is the senior investing editor at Kiplinger.com. She joined the publication in April 2021 after 10 years of working as an investing writer and columnist at a local investment research firm. In her previous role, Karee focused primarily on options trading, as well as technical, fundamental and sentiment analysis.