NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting higher Tuesday as Wall Street’s superstar, Nvidia, rises toward another record.
The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in early trading and on track for a third straight gain following a five-day swoon that bridged the new year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 171 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.
Nvidia rose 0.8% after its CEO, Jensen Huang, unveiled a suite of new products and partnerships at a keynote address the night before at an electronics conference in Las Vegas. He talked up the potential for artificial-intelligence technology in robotics, among other opportunities for big growth.
Nvidia’s stock is coming off two straight years where it’s more than doubled because of the huge sales growth that the AI frenzy is delivering. That’s raised criticism that Nvidia and other AI-related stocks have shot too high, too fast, but the momentum continues to roll in part because of investors afraid of getting left behind.
Cintas rose 2.2% after making public its offer to buy its smaller rival, UniFirst, for $275 per share in cash. Cintas said it first made that offer in November but has been unable to get UniFirst’s board to meet. UniFirst had rejected an earlier offer of $255 per share, said Cintas, which provides uniforms, restroom supplies, fire extinguishers and other products to businesses.
UniFirst soared 32.9% to $225.01, below Cintas’ offer price.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, both Shutterstock and Getty both soared after they announced they were joining to become a $3.7 billion visual content company to provide customers with a broader array still imagery, video, music, 3D and other media.
Getty Images shareholders will own a slight majority of the combined company. Getty shares jumped 31.1%, while Shutterstock climbed 15.7%.
In stock markets abroad, some notable Chinese companies fell after the U.S. Defense Department added dozens of them to a list of companies it says have ties to China’s military. The announcement caused some of the companies to protest and say they will seek to have the decision reversed.
Added to the list were gaming and technology company Tencent, artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and the world’s biggest battery maker CATL. Tencent’s stock that trades in Hong Kong fell 7.3%.
That helped pull the Hang Seng index down 1.2%, but indexes were stronger elsewhere in China and across much of Asia and Europe.
In the bond market, Treasury yield were holding relatively steady ahead of reports coming later in the morning on the U.S. job market and services industries.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury was holding at 4.62%, where it was late Monday. It’s been climbing sharply from roughly 4.15% in early December, which is a notable move for the bond market.
Such rises in Treasury yields can hurt stock prices because higher-paying bonds can peel away investors who otherwise might buy stocks. And yields have been rising for a few reasons. Among them is the fact that the U.S. economy has remained remarkably resilient despite the high interest rates instituted in recent years by the Federal Reserve to get inflation under control
And the Fed now looks to be cutting its main short-term interest rate less in 2025 than it earlier expected. The threat of tariffs and other policies from President-elect Donald Trump has raised worries about possible put upward pressure on inflation, which has been stubbornly remaining just above the Fed’s 2% target.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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