US Stocks Rise as Waller's Dovish Comments Cool Rate Hike Expectations

US stocks rose on Thursday following dovish comments from Federal Reserve Governor Waller, who suggested that interest rates may remain steady in September if inflation continues to ease. The S&P 500 gained 1.06% to 7,747.71, its largest single-day increase since August 4. The Dow Jones and Nasdaq also rose by 1.18% and 1.40%, respectively.

Waller stated that recent data indicate slowing inflation, and that the current interest rate setting is sufficient to bring US inflation back to 2%. If the trend continues, he would favor maintaining rates unchanged in September. This led to a decline in traders' bets on a September rate hike from 63% to 52%.

NVIDIA acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, its largest single acquisition to date, with shares rising by 3.20%. OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, claiming it was trained on 100,000 GPUs and has improved cybersecurity capabilities. However, the AI industry is navigating a phase marked by simultaneous advancements in model capabilities and challenges to infrastructure stability.