Finance News December 4th (Editor: Shi Zhengcheng) While global investors watched the historic shakes in the South Korean political arena, the US stock market, while continuing to rise, showed signs of fatigue. The S&P 500 index and Nasdaq hit historical highs again, but the actual gains were not significant.

As of the Tuesday's close, the S&P 500 index rose by 0.05% to 6049.88 points, marking the 55th time this year it hit a historical closing high; the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 0.4% to 19480.91 points; the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.17% to 44705.53 points.

(S&P 500 index daily chart, source: TradingView)

What's driving the tech giants to continue pushing the index forward is the market's expectations of rate cuts and a soft landing for the economy. Tuesday's release of the October JOLTS job vacancy data hit 7.744 million, exceeding the expected 7.49 million.

Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, stated that in the backdrop of the labor market gradually cooling and nearing an economic soft landing, today's JOLTS report can be considered the best-case scenario of reasonable expectations - layoffs remain low, job vacancies and resignations are both on the rise, indicating improvements in confidence among employers and job seekers.

CME's "FedWatch Tool" shows that traders raised their expectations on Tuesday for a Fed rate cut in two weeks, with the probability increasing by nearly 10 percentage points from Monday's 61%.

(source: CME)

LPL Financial's chief economist Jeffrey Loch said the Federal Reserve's decision on December 18 will be a tense choice, but if most voting members prioritize employment tasks, the market should expect a decline in policy interest rates to support risk appetite.

As the trading day on Wednesday approaches, in addition to the 'small non-farm' ADP data, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell will also give a public speech. The non-farm report for November in the USA will be released before Friday's opening.

Popular stocks performance

Tuesday was another day of mostly rising tech giants. Among them, Apple rose 1.28%, Microsoft rose 0.05%, Amazon rose 1.3%, Nvidia rose 1.18%, Google C rose 0.02%, Musk's compensation package issue caused Tesla to fall 1.59%, Meta rose 3.51%, and the uncertain future of Intel plummeted by 6.1%.

Vanguard, the world's second-largest asset management company, chief economist Joe Davis warned of extreme market crowding on the tech and AI concept stock side. He cautioned that despite the impact of AI potentially being similar to the 1980s computer proliferation, this year's investor frenzy overestimated the short-term potential of this technology, increasing the risk of price corrections.

The Nasdaq Golden Dragon Index rose 1.16% on Tuesday, marking the fourth consecutive trading day of gains. Mid and small-cap Chinese concept stocks performed significantly better than large internet platforms.

As of Tuesday's close, Alibaba dropped by 0.31%, JD.com dropped by 0.99%, Baidu dropped by 0.62%, Pinduoduo dropped by 0.54%, 'Gu Zi Economy' concept stock Miniso rose by 9.64%, JinkoSolar rose by 7.13%, New Oriental rose by 6.54%, Nio rose by 5.45%, Tuya Inc. rose by 5.17%, and Futu Holdings Ltd. rose by 3.4%.

Undoubtedly, the most eventful on Tuesday was still the MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) in the US stock market. Despite falling more than 7% intraday, it ended the day with a 1.59% decline.

Other news

Tesla's 'bullish' investor announced he is no longer ALL-IN.

Tesla's third largest individual shareholder, Leo KoGuan, recently stated that he is reducing his holdings in Tesla and reallocating funds to short-term US Treasury bills. He mentioned that he is selling Tesla stocks and increasing positions in US 3-month Treasury bills.

Trump's eldest son once again influences the stock market, doubling the stock price of the company he joined.

US-listed company PSQ Holdings announced on Tuesday that Donald Trump Jr., the son of US President-elect Trump, will join the board of directors, leading to a 270% surge in the company's stock price by the close.

It is worth noting that last week, Donald Jr. joined the advisory board of drone manufacturer Unusual Machines. This move caused the company's stock to rise more than 325% in a week, but has already fallen over 36% this week.

Apple evaluates using Amazon chips to train AI models.

At the re:Invent conference hosted by Amazon Web Services on Tuesday, Apple's Director of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Benoit Dupin, made a surprise appearance. He mentioned that Apple has been using Amazon's custom chips to run services like maps, Siri, the App Store, and is also evaluating AWS' latest AI training chip, Trainium2, for pre-training Apple's AI models.

美CDC announced the end of the E. coli outbreak related to McDonald's.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday that the deadly E. coli outbreak related to onion slices supplied by McDonald's has ended. In October, E. coli infections from McDonald's burgers occurred in 14 states in the USA, with 104 people experiencing illness after eating the burgers, one death, 34 hospitalizations, and at least 4 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome. Regulators also believe that the actual number of E. coli infections may be much higher.

Meta is also seeking nuclear power transactions.

Reports on Tuesday indicate that the US tech giant Meta is seeking partners to start using nuclear reactors to power data centers in the early 2030s. Urvi Parekh, the global energy lead at Meta, stated that the company is open to various ideas regarding the scale, type, location of reactors, and is looking for partners who will be involved from the project's inception to completion. Meta is also willing to share costs in the early stages of development and has purchasing power when the project goes online.