It’s been a week of records for the U.S. stock market — and for several stocks in the CNBC Investing Club’s portfolio. The S & P 500 jumped to an all-time high of 6,187.68 Friday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose to a new record of 20,311.51. Both benchmark gauges advanced around 4% from last Friday’s close. These milestones cap off a remarkable comeback for financial markets since April. Stocks were pummeled by President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff announcement on April 2 as Wall Street panicked over what higher levies would mean for economic growth and geopolitical relations. The S & P 500 has jumped 24% since its 2025 lows on April 8 despite lingering uncertainty on three fronts: the administration’s trade policies, the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy move and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. That rebound in equities has lifted seven Club holdings to all-time highs, including Nvidia, Microsoft , Broadcom , GE Vernova , Capital One , Goldman Sachs and CrowdStrike . The outperformances highlight many of the driving forces of the stock market. In fact, we see three key themes: 1. The generative artificial intelligence trade is back. Wall Street had feared a slowdown in AI spending as U.S.-China tensions threatened semiconductor production and demand. Investors have since brushed off this uncertainty, which stemmed from tariffs and Trump’s chip export controls . That’s, in part, because of a slew of good news from AI behemoths like Nvidia, which hit a record of over $158 apiece on Friday as the stock heads for a five-day win streak. The recent gains have raised Nvidia’s market cap to $3.8 trillion, making it the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world. A blowout quarterly earnings report in late May indicated demand for the chipmaker’s offerings were still strong. Around the same time, CEO Jensen Huang announced a huge deal with startup Humain, which would send 18,000 of its latest artificial intelligence chips to Saudi Arabia. This all helped fellow chipmaker Broadcom as well, which on Friday hit a record of $272 apiece, its latest of several records over the month. That’s because the more demand there is for AI chips, the more sales both of these firms can rake in. Another beneficiary of the AI trade are the hyperscalers, the companies that help support the computational power and infrastructure needed for AI. One of those mega-caps, Microsoft, is benefiting because of its huge cloud computing business, Azure, which generates a large portion of its revenues. The stock reached a record high of over $499 on Friday. Club holding GE Vernova has been a recent AI winner, too. GE Vernova supports the build out of the data centers — the power-hungry facilities used to handle the computation demand of AI — with the production of its turbines. The industrial stock has hit a number of highs this year alone, mostly recently on Friday. Shares are up over 61% so far in 2025, compared to the S & P 500’s 5%….
Read More: 3 forces driving a record week for stocks as 7 portfolio names hit highs
