U.S. stocks kicked off March in fresh record territory, with the S&P 500 clinching another big week of gains.
On Friday the S&P 500 posted gains in 16 out of 18 weeks for the first time since April 1971, according to Dow Jones Market. The index scored a weekly gain of 0.9%.
After the U.S. stock market’s “dramatic increase” over the past four months, investors are beginning to believe in a “second leg” of the rally on optimism surrounding the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and markets, according to Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management.
They seem to be considering that “it’s not just going to be a narrow slice of the market that benefits from AI spending,” Ma said in a phone interview on Friday. A potential “productivity boom” from AI could keep fueling stock-market gains in the coming years, he said.
Read: Dell’s big quarter, fueled by surge in AI-server demand, sends stock soaring 19%
So far in 2024, the S&P 500 has climbed 7.7%, according to FactSet data.
The U.S. stock market posted additional gains Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial
DJIA
rising 0.2% while the S&P 500
SPX
gained 0.8% and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite
COMP
climbed 1.1%, FactSet data show. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at all-time highs.
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