By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 climbed Thursday as chip stocks led a broad-based rally in tech and the strongest jobless claims report in decades pointed to underlying strength in the economy.

rose 0.9%; the gained 0.7% (or 244 points), the rose 1.2%.

After Jensen Huang, the chief executive of NVIDIA (NASDAQ) said that Intel would be interested in using Intel as a source for its chips, chip stocks rose more than 4 percent.

Wall Street has its doubts, with some stating that Nvidia would not allow a competitor to manufacture its chips. 

“[W]e see little likelihood that NVDA would choose to fab prominent products at arguably its most significant competitor’s facilities, a choice that would provide Intel with an early look at NVDA’s future chip design,” Wedbush said in a note.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ) continued to be a strong player in tech. The social media giant announced plans for a new hyperscale data centre in Kansas City.

The data supporting the sentiment towards risk assets supported also economic strength. In fact, jobless claims dropped to their lowest since 1989.

“It [the labor market] is extremely strong and this data is exactly the sort of evidence that has given the Fed confidence that they can raise rates more quickly to battle inflation,” Jefferies said in a note.

However, the underlying index fell more than anticipated by 2.2%. Economists however were quick to minimize this weakness and predict a rebound.

“It seems reasonable, given firms’ sky-high investment spending intentions, to think that March will see a clear rebound,” Pantheon Macroeconomics said.

The backdrop of stronger economic data offset rising geopolitical tensions as the U.S. and its allies look to further isolate Russia as the latter’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine rolls into the fifth week.   

Biden stated that the U.S. will respond to Russia’s use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and asked for Russia to be kicked out the G20.

Uber Technologies (NYSE) meanwhile surged 4%, after the ride-sharing firm announced a partnership in which it will add New York taxis into its app.

GameStop (NYSE) took a short break after its meltdown and is now on track to rally for seven days.

Tilray (NASDAQ 🙂 and Aurora Cannabis NASDAQ : were leading the charge for cannabis stocks. The U.S. House of Representatives has confirmed that it will vote next week on a bill to legalize federally marijuana. An earlier version of the bill passed the House in Dec 2020, but did not advance to the majority GOP Senate.