American stock indices, including S&P 500 and Nasdaq, reached record highs. This happened because of positive economic data and encouraging earnings reports. Investors felt confident as consumers continued spending.

The IPO Pulse actually peaked last October and has been slowing since then. But the downturn certainly accelerated in March and April as the stock market sold off, with the IPO Pulse falling to a 1½-year low in April (chart below, blue line).

Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) stock saw a massive rally across the first half of 2025's trading. The tech company's share price rose 80.3% across the stretch against the backdrop of a 5.5% gain for the S&P 500 index, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence

The Dow Jones index rose Thursday on surprise jobless claims and retail sales. Nvidia chipmaker TSMC rose on earnings.

Nvidia took a $4.5 billion write-off in its latest quarter on unsold H20 chips that it was unable to repurpose for other markets. If sales of these high-volume chips to China resume, a reversal of this write-off could boost earnings.

Nvidia owns a 7% stake in CoreWeave, and made it possible for the young company to be the first to launch its latest GPUs. In February, CoreWeave became the first hyperscaler to make Nvidia's new Blackwell architecture broadly available -- and it just did the same recently with the latest iteration, Blackwell Ultra.