20 Minutes to the Close, and Cloud Names Are Carrying the Tape

Twenty minutes before the close and the S&P 500 is still up 1.52%, the Nasdaq up 2.18% — today's rally is holding. Compared to my last check-in though, the gains have cooled a touch, S&P down 0.05 points and Nasdaq down 0.14 points, so the push is losing a bit of steam heading into the bell. Word that Amazon just joined the $3 trillion market-cap club rippled through the cloud names, and cloud stocks led today's charge while utilities and semiconductors lagged behind. Yesterday's Korean session was rough — the KOSPI fell 5.12% while only the KOSDAQ held up with a 2.44% gain — and today's US market is telling a pretty different story from that one. In my own book, Microsoft's still sitting at +23.8%, Alphabet and Nvidia are basically flat, and Poongsan is down 1.7% as I wait out the close. With twenty minutes left, I'm watching whether that cloud strength can carry the tape all the way to the bell.