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Stocks on Wall Street closed higher Thursday as a recent run-up in bond yields eased further and big technology companies rallied, helping the market recoup its losses from earlier in the week.
The S&P 500 rose 1.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%, and the Nasdaq composite closed 1.4% higher. The indexes are now on track to post a gain for the week. The mixed start to September follows a mostly positive August during which every major index notched a gain for the month.
Big technology and communication services stocks accounted for a large share of the rally. Their huge valuations tend to give them more influence over the broader market's direction.
Microsoft rose 2.7%, Apple gained 1% and Meta climbed 3%.
Giant chip maker Nvidia, whose high-end chips have emerged as AI's best building blocks, rose 1.8% after saying it would buy the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $13 billion.
Oil prices initially ticked higher as the six-month long U.S. war with Iran intensified, but ended up little changed.
Iran fired at Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for U.S. bombardments earlier in the week. The fighting between the U.S. and Iran heated up after the U.S. hit Iranian rocket launchers Sunday on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, saying Iran was planning to use them to send mines into the waterway.
The renewed fighting has sent U.S. crude prices sharply higher this week, though the momentum cooled Thursday. After rising in the early going, the price of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.1% to settle at $95.52 per barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude edged up 0.3% to settle at $91.30 a barrel.
The government will release August inflation figures Sept. 11, shortly before the Fed's policymaking committee's next meeting, which ends on Sept. 16.