Financial Markets                      11/19 09:34

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. stock market is climbing on Wednesday, for now at 
least, ahead of a couple huge tests for Wall Street.

   The S&P 500 rose 0.8% in morning trading, coming off a four-day losing 
streak, its longest in nearly three months. It's been shaky recently, not just 
day to day but also hour to hour, because of worries that stock prices have 
broadly shot too high and that the Federal Reserve may not deliver as many 
revitalizing jolts through lower interest rates as expected.

   The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 100 points, or 0.2%, as of 10 a.m. 
Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher.

   Constellation Energy rallied 5.2% after the U.S. Department of Energy said 
it's lending $1 billion to help restart Constellation's nuclear power plant at 
Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. Lowe's rose 3.5% after the home-improvement 
retailer reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.

   They helped offset a 0.5% dip for Target, which reported a stronger profit 
but also weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The 
retailer hinted that challenges may continue through the critical holiday 
shopping season.

   The market's focus, though, remained squarely on Nvidia. Wall Street's most 
influential stock climbed 3.2% to recover some of its loss for the month so 
far, which topped 10% on Tuesday. Traders are making their final moves before 
the chip company reports how much profit it made during the summer after 
trading ends for the day.

   Much is riding on it.

   Nvidia has grown to become the largest stock on Wall Street and briefly 
topped $5 trillion in value. That means its movements carry more weight on the 
S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index's 
direction some days.

   One way Nvidia can quiet criticism that its stock shot too high, which led 
to this month's struggles, is to keep delivering bigger profits because stock 
prices tend to track profits over the long term.

   Nvidia has also become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around 
artificial-intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips 
to ramp up their AI efforts. Palantir Technologies is helping customers to use 
AI, for example, while Amazon, Microsoft and others are pouring investments 
into AI data centers that will hopefully improve their productivity.

   Those AI-linked stocks, along with Nvidia, have been a major reason the U.S. 
stock market has been setting records, with the latest for the S&P 500 coming 
late last month.

   Worries have been rising, though, that all the investment may not produce as 
much profit and benefit for companies as earlier hoped, and critics have been 
suggesting AI's surge is similar to the bubble that enveloped dot-com stocks. 
That ultimately imploded in 2000 and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half.

   Traders are also making their final moves ahead of a jobs report coming from 
the U.S. government on Thursday.

   It will show many jobs employers created and destroyed in September, which 
earlier got delayed because of the government's shutdown. Even though the data 
may be stale, it could sway Wall Street because of how closely traders are 
paying attention to the job market's strength.

   The job market has been slowing enough this year that the Fed has already 
cut its main interest rate twice. Lower interest rates can give a boost to the 
economy and to prices for investments, and the expectation on Wall Street had 
been for more cuts, including at the Fed's next meeting in December.

   But some Fed officials have been hinting that they should take a pause, in 
part because inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed's 2% target. Lower 
interest rates can worsen inflation.

   What the Fed does is critical for the market because stock prices ran to 
records in part because of expectations for continued cuts to rates.

   Treasury yields have been swinging in the bond market as traders rejigger 
their forecasts. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.11% from 
4.12% late Tuesday.

   In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements 
across Europe and Asia.

   ___

   AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

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