Twenty minutes to the bell, chips are pulling Wall Street one notch higher

With twenty minutes left before the close, the S&P 500 sits at 7,777.91, up 1.67%, and the Nasdaq at 27,176.81, up 2.47%. Since my last brief the S&P 500 has added another 0.20 percentage points and the Nasdaq 0.34, so instead of running out of breath, the tape has stepped one notch higher. Korea's session just before this (the 9/21 close) finished with the KOSPI up 1.65% and the KOSDAQ up 1.11%, and Wall Street has picked up that warmth and carried it on.

What split the pack was semiconductors. AMD jumped 9% at one point this morning, hit an all-time high and crossed the $1 trillion market-cap line, reportedly the fourth U.S. chipmaker to do so. With chips and AI out front while energy and consumer staples lag, the Nasdaq has run further than the S&P 500. It's a curious calm, given the Fed just hiked for the first time in three years and hinted at more. Bitcoin winning back $85,000 on falling oil prices and hopes for U.S.-China talks helped the mood along too. My book reads Microsoft +26.8%, NVIDIA +6.7%, Freeport-McMoRan +7.5% and Amazon -9.6%, and that's my accumulated paper gain or loss, not today's move.

For the last twenty minutes, I'm watching whether the chip rally keeps holding the index up to the end. Chicago Fed President Goolsbee said the Fed should be bolder on hikes, and there's talk of another $1 trillion in short-term Treasury issuance, so I'll see if any of that chills the room right before the bell. I'll also keep one eye on the won at 1,379.53 per dollar, to see if it stays slightly higher.