The major stock indexes all closed on a positive note Thursday evening during the last trading session.

This is one of the biggest positive closes the markets have seen in a while, with Nasdaq finishing up 3.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 456 points, or 1.18%. To round out the top three, S&P 500 closed up 2.11%. The market indexes are still seeing all-time highs and are poised to surge upward for Friday when trading opens.

Over the last year, the Nasdaq Composite has gained nearly 50%. As the economy improves very slowly, we expect those numbers to improve for the end of 2024.

Market Winners and Losers

The big stock market gainer for Thursday for the Nasdaq index was Nvidia, which was up 16.4%. The AI chip manufacturer will likely keep on surging thanks to a good sales report and a positive outlook for 2024.

Moderna came in a high second with 13.53% gain over the previous day. Even though vaccine sales have significantly decreased, Moderna showed a profit in the 4^th quarter for 2023.

Over on the Dow Jones, the major mover was Salesforce Inc. Their stock earned 3.56%. The cloud based software company outpaced other tech companies for Thursday’s stock race that was primarily lifted by tech stocks.

Not all technology stocks did well, though. Intel Corp dropped 1.13% on Thursday. Intel is set to receive $10 billion in subsidies from the Biden administration to help the company produce more semiconductors and meet the growing demand for this vital component.

S&P 500 shares many of its stocks with Nasdaq. Moderna and NVidia were the big winners there as well. The lowest performing stock on this index, though, was AT&T, which was down 2.41%, almost tied with Agilent Technologies for stock price drop.

The stocks tell a story of tech companies taking the top spots but also some of the lowest stocks too. As some of these companies gain a large percentage of the market, that leaves less for everyone else. Tech is not a surefire investment right now, and traders need to choose their tech stocks very carefully.