DJIA up 371.80 points (Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - New York, 24 Jun - US shares were trading mixed at midday to kick off the final trading week of a positive first half as AI darling Nvidia lost more ground.

The AI behemoth fell 4.6% for the second day in a row on Friday, undermining the Nasdaq index which has buoyed the market's resilient performance in the first six months.

The stock, which has gained more than 150% this year, took over the crown of most valuable company briefly last week from Microsoft before handing it back after its end-week losses.

The company has boomed thanks to growing demand for chips that train and run generative AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and has surged more than 1,000% since October 2022. In early trading it was down more than 2%.

With only a light calendar today, investors are setting out their stalls for bigger data and earnings to come during the week. Big-name companies like FedEx, Nike and Micron Technology will report quarterly earnings while on the data front the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption expenditures price index, is on tap Friday.

As inflation shows signs of cooling, hopes are rising the Federal Reserve might have the room to ease monetary policy later this year.

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee told CNBC today that more soft readings on inflation would raise questions about whether interest rates are too high.

'If we get more months, like what we have just seen in the last month on inflation, coupled with slowing conditions in some of the other parts of the real economy, then you would have to start questioning should we remain as restrictive as we've been,' Goolsbee told CNBC.

The Fed is due to release the results of its annual big-bank stress test on Wednesday.

At 1617 GMT, the Dow Jones was 371.80 points, or 0.95%, at 39,522.13 points.

The S&P 500 was 15.33 points, or 0.28%, higher at 5,479.95 points.

The Nasdaq was losing 29.03 points, or 0.17%, at 17,659.48 points.

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(RADIOCOR) 24-06-24 17:24:12 (0487) 5 NNNN