Stocks finished Monday on a positive note, with all three main indexes building on last week's impressive gains. Market participants are upbeat that this week's heavy slate of Federal Reserve speakers – including Fed Chair Jerome Powell – will give clues on when the central bank will start cutting interest rates and by how much.
Indeed, investors will be keeping a close eye on the Federal Reserve, with several central bank officials scheduled to speak. Most notable is Powell, who will take the mic on Friday during the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.
The appearances of Fed officials at Jackson Hole have been known to spark volatility in the stock market. In 2022, for instance, stocks fell dramatically after Powell warned higher interest rates would create "pain" for households and businesses.
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This time around, he's expected to stick to his script from the July Fed meeting. However, one "evolution of the July FOMC language would suggest the committee is 'very close' or 'close' to the point where easing is likely to occur," says Michael Gapen, head of U.S. economics at BofA Global Research.
"A more dovish signal could be a statement that the committee wants to avoid 'unexpected weakness' in the labor market [particularly in the wake of the July jobs report], rather than simply responding to it after it occurs," Gapen adds.
AMD buys ZT Systems for $5 billion to expand AI capabilities
In single-stock news, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) jumped 4.5% after the chipmaker said it is buying cloud-computing infrastructure firm ZT Systems in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $4.9 billion.
"Our acquisition of ZT Systems is the next major step in our long-term artificial intelligence (AI) strategy to deliver leadership training and inferencing solutions that can be rapidly deployed at scale across cloud and enterprise customers," said Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su in the press release.
What's more, AMD's purchase of ZT Systems allows it to challenge Nvidia's (NVDA, +4.4%) dominance in the AI data center chip market "by enhancing their ability to accelerate adoption to directly compete with Nvidia's popular graphics processing units (GPUs)," says Mark Perez, chief investments officer at Linqto. " This acquisition better equips AMD to compete with Nvidia's integrated approach, potentially offering a similar end-to-end solution and capturing a larger share of the AI infrastructure market."
Perez adds that M&A activity in the AI space is just starting to heat up as many venture-backed AI firms were funded at unsustainable valuations.
GM stock rises after latest round of layoffs
General Motors (GM) rose 1.0% after CNBC said the automaker is cutting 1,000 jobs in its software and services unit. The layoffs come as GM "prioritizes investments that will have the greatest impact," according to the report.
The news follows last week's headlines that GM is cutting staff in China and could meet with SAIC Motor, its joint venture partner, to discuss lowering production capacity.
Argus Research analyst Bill Selesky (Buy) says that General Motors' efforts to promote "capital spending discipline, a recalibrated product strategy, and an enhanced cost reduction program" are "impressive as it demonstrates that the GM management team is both financially flexible and strategically long-term focused."
McDonald's pops on new price target
McDonald's (MCD) was another big winner, climbing 3.3% to make it the best Dow Jones stock today. Boosting the blue chip was a bullish note from Evercore ISI that said it is growing "increasingly bullish" on MCD's domestic business over the next year or so.
Evercore analysts maintained an Outperform (the equivalent of a Buy) rating on McDonald's and lifted their price target to $320 from $300, representing an implied upside of 11% to current levels.
As for the main indexes, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.4% at 17,876 and the S&P 500 was 1.0% higher at 5,608. It was the eighth straight win for both indexes, the longest daily win streak since December for the Nasdaq and the lengthiest one for the S&P 500 since November.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% to 40,896, marking its fifth consecutive gain.
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