Dow Jones climbs 1%, NASDAQ ends flat as Nvidia, other AI stocks recover from intraday lows

Wall Street settled in green on Thursday as selling in the AI and semiconductor stocks halted despite high inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 556 points, or 1.08%, to settle at 52,177.69, while the S&P 500 gained 0.33% to 7,744.06. The tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite ended flat with a positive bias at 26,713.03, up 0.08%.

Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Western Digital, Seagate Technology and SK Hynix ended lower but recovered from their intra-day lows.

CoreWeave Inc rebounded 5.94% after declining over 15% in the previous session amid concerns surrounding the company's borrowing to build AI infrastructure.

Micron Technology surged 1.87%, while NXP Semiconductors NV gained 4.64%.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell Technologies slipped 7.1% and 6.9%, respectively.

The Dow was lifted by gains in stocks such as Nike, Salesforce, The Home Depot, Sherwin-Williams, UnitedHealth Group, IBM, Americal Express, Boeing, Visa, Amgen, and McDonald's Corp.

US chip stocks are under pressure after hotter-than-expected consumer inflation data for September 2026 was released on Wednesday. The high inflation has increased expectations that the Fed could raise interest rates, which would make borrowing expensive for the buildout of AI data centres and investment in AI companies.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) surged 0.6% in September after climbing 0.4% in August, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics reported. The all items index for the past 12 months rose 3.7%.

"The index for gasoline rose 9.1% in September, accounting for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index increased 5.2% over the month following a 2.1% increase in August. The shelter index rose 0.4% in September after rising 0.3% in August. The index for food was unchanged in September, as the index for food away from home increased 0.2% and the index for food at home fell 0.1%," the Bureau of Labour Statistics said.

Brent Crude, the international standard, eased 0.53% to $105.35 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) declined 0.72% to $97.25 a barrel.