Wall Street stocks finished the week on a high, thanks to continued AI-related momentum, especially Nvidia, which finished above $2 trillion for the first time.
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq ended at new all-time highs after records in Tokyo and Frankfurt, AFP reported.
"Attitudinal risk has driven several global stock indexes to record highs this week, and the first day of March was no exception," said Axel Rudolph, senior market analyst at online trading platform IG.
David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation, said "market sentiment remains bullish and there appears to be little appetite for profit-taking."
Since the end of last year, stock markets have rallied, initially on hopes that central banks will soon be able to start lowering their high interest rates as inflation has begun to return to normal levels.
While higher-than-expected inflation data in recent months has pushed back expectations of the first interest rate cut by mid-year, markets have instead been driven by stellar results from artificial intelligence firms in recent weeks.
Perhaps no company has benefited more than Nvidia, led by Jensen Huang, who has developed technology perfectly suited to developing large-scale language models (LLMs) that underlie generative AI interfaces like ChatGPT.
Nvidia jumped 4% on March 1 and ended the day valued at more than $2 trillion, joining an elite club that includes only Apple, Microsoft and Saudi Aramco.
Dell Technologies has become the latest big beneficiary of AI fever, surging more than 31% after an earnings report that highlighted its growing artificial intelligence business.
The high-tech Nasdaq led the major US indexes, rising 1.1%.
Sam Stovall of CFRA Research said gains in New York were also supported by weaker economic data, including the Institute for Supply Management's survey of manufacturers and consumer confidence data, "suggesting there may be more reasons." Fed to cut interest rates in May.
In Europe, the DAX in Frankfurt hit a new record high and the CAC in Paris also neared a record high, as a smaller-than-expected drop in euro zone inflation failed to dampen sentiment.
Meanwhile in Asia, Japan's Nikkei nearly hit 40,000 for the first time.
Asian markets were mostly higher, with better-than-expected data from China supporting sentiment.
"China's factory growth, which exceeded forecasts even as output contracted for a fifth straight month, did not dampen investor sentiment as the country's stock indexes continued their recovery," noted IG's Rudolph. /BGNES
