Traders walk past screens on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., August 13, 2025. <\/p>\n
Brendan McDermid | Reuters<\/p>\n
Stocks rose Wednesday, adding to their recent momentum as expectations for lower U.S. Federal Reserve rates continue driving the major indexes to all-time highs.<\/p>\n
The Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a> gained 463.66 points, or 1.04%, at 44,922.27. The S&P 500<\/a> added 0.32% to finish at 6,466.58, while the Nasdaq Composite<\/a> settled up 0.14% at 21,713.14. Both indexes closed at record highs for the second straight day.<\/p>\n AMD<\/a> popped 5.4% to lead gains in tech. Apple<\/a> also advanced 1.6%. Shares of Paramount Skydance<\/a> soared 36.7%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those moves followed a record-setting session Tuesday sparked by a tamer-than-expected<\/a> inflation report that gave investors hope of a Fed rate cut in September. Traders are pricing in a near 100% chance of a rate cut at the Fed’s September meeting, per trading data from the\u00a0CME’s FedWatch Tool<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird, also pointed to a strong second-quarter earnings season so far as another market catalyst. While the pace of earnings reports has lulled these last few days, it ramps back up next week with a slew of big retail names on the docket.<\/p>\n “This has been a really impressive earning season, which showcases kind of a corporate resilience from all the headwinds that we saw across the summer,” he said to CNBC. “You also had just a really nice kind of breadth.”<\/p>\n Investors rotated out of megacap “Magnificent Seven” stocks in favor of their smaller counterparts<\/a>, with the Russell 2000<\/a> gaining 2% on Wednesday. Small-cap stocks are a beneficiary of lower interest rates, since they also lower the cost of capital and possibly boost consumer spending.<\/p>\n