Nasdaq 100: AI powers tech rally, potentially the next wave of global growth

Today, the Nasdaq goes into the start of trading on Wall Street with all the big beneficiaries of AI leading the charge.

Putting aside some of the darker uses of AI, IGTV’s Jeremy Naylor says AI is an exciting area to follow.

(Video Transcript)

AI powering growth

Artificial Intelligence has been one of the big stock stories this week. I'll cover NVIDIA earnings in just a moment's time, but the background to all this is that AI is now beginning to drive growth in some parts of the world. And indeed, this is what's expected to be the big GDP driver over the next several quarters or so.

And we've seen it recently in new drug discoveries, a really good positive news story coming through where we are able to see AI drive new drugs faster and cheaper. Of course, there are also some downside stories to this such as warfare and so forth. But setting those darker news stories to one side, looking at AI as a good news story is driving the Nasdaq higher.

Nasdaq

Let's take a look at the Nasdaq. First of all, this is the Nasdaq 100 on the IG platform and we are, as we speak, pushing new highs in this from the beginning of the year, this vertical dotted line here when we saw this index tread all the way down at the beginning of the year at 10,600. Here we are now breaking the 14,000 level for the first time that we've seen this since the middle of April last year. So we're at 13-month highs now for the Nasdaq and it's pushing higher as we speak.

NVIDIA

As I said, one of the big stock stories this week has been that of NVIDIA. Now, this is a games chip company, but it has branched out into other areas and artificial intelligence is really the big driver behind this.

You can see that whopping great big candle on the far right hand side of the chart, taking us up to a record high. We breached the previous record high of absolutely smashing at 346 level. 38295 is what we're trading at the moment on the IG platform all-sessions, and you can see a record high for NVIDIA.

AMD

And it's not just NVIDIA that's benefiting from this, Advanced Micro Devices, another chip company that's been doing brisk business on the upside, another all-session stock. And here you can see not too far away from breaching this high that we had back in March 2022 at 12557. So that looks like that could well be broken if we see a continuation of this recent trend.

Microsoft

If you're long on any of these, your stock goes below recent price action. It doesn't stop there either because other companies that have as a periphery part of the business, of course, it's no longer peripheral, but Microsoft has a really big AI part of the business and this is pushing higher as well. And you can see that stock as of yesterday's high point, the highest we've seen there since January 2022.

So tech stocks doing well, artificial intelligence the main driver behind what we're seeing at the moment and some of those individual stock stories powering ahead on the Nasdaq, driving that market now to a 13-month high.