Wall Street closed sharply higher Thursday, powered by a broad rally in semiconductor shares, according to a Moneycontrol markets live blog. Microsoft logged its biggest daily percentage gain in 18 years after the company issued what the outlet described as a stellar forecast.
The trigger was spending. Moneycontrol reported that aggressive AI investment plans from Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet — part of what it framed as a roughly $700-billion AI spending wave — offered fresh evidence that demand for chips and chipmaking equipment will stay strong. NDTV Profit similarly reported that Amazon and Microsoft doubling down on AI budgets eased concerns hanging over the chip sector.
That mattered because chip stocks had been, in Moneycontrol's words, battered heading into the announcements. Investors have spent months debating whether the biggest technology companies would keep writing enormous checks for AI infrastructure, or start pulling back. The earnings guidance answered that question, at least for now.
Memory chipmakers ran hardest. Yahoo Finance reported that Micron, SK Hynix, SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate all rallied by double-digit percentages. Seeking Alpha attributed part of the surge in AI and memory chip names to a hedge fund unwinding positions — meaning some of the move reflects forced buying and portfolio mechanics rather than pure enthusiasm about business fundamentals.
The momentum carried overseas. Moneycontrol noted South Korea's Kospi index, home to major memory manufacturers, jumped 13%, while GIFT Nifty pointed to a positive open in India.
Why it matters: the capital budgets of a handful of American tech giants have become the single biggest swing factor for a global chip industry — and, increasingly, for the stock indexes that ordinary retirement accounts track.