Nasdaq up 0.29% (Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - New York, 20 Jun - US shares opened mainly higher as Nvidia racked up more gains to lift the market to more highs.

Wall Street is on track for a winning week after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed Tuesday at new record levels. The stock market was closed yesterday for the Juneteenth holiday.

Nvidia was up more than 3% in early trade as it continues to fuel stock market growth on the back of the ongoing AI frenzy. The chip giant recently overtook Microsoft to become the most valuable publicly-listed company.

Artificial intelligence has been one of the main drivers behind Wall Street's rise in recent months as investors bet on its prospects to carry business into the next cycle.

Nvidia is the leading producer of AI chips.

The latest weekly jobless claims reading meanwhile came in slightly firmer than expected, confirming recent data indicating the jobs market is finally cooling off.

The labor market is key to the debate about when the Fed can start cutting interest rates and whether it will be able to engineer a soft landing - taming inflation without triggering a sharp downturn.

On the stocks front, shares in Accenture were up 7% after it beat expectations on quarterly results while Honeywell was up 0.4% after it agreed to buy aerospace and defense tech firm CAES Systems for 1.9 billion dollars.

Just after the opening bell the Dow Jones was down 32.96 points, or 0.08%, at 38,801.90, the S&P 500 was up 12.21 points, or 0.22%, at 5,499.24 while the Nasdaq was up 51.47 points, or 0.29%, at 17,913.71.

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(RADIOCOR) 20-06-24 15:47:08 (0491) 5 NNNN