Dow breaks 50,000 for first time, as US stocks rally

The US stock market roared back on Friday, as technology stocks recovered much of their losses from earlier in the week and bitcoin halted its plunge, at least for now.The S&P 500 rallied 2 per cent for its best day since May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,206 points, or 2.5 per cent, and topped the 50,000 level for the first time, while the Nasdaq composite leaped 2.2 per cent.Chip companies helped drive the widespread rally, and Nvidia jumped 7.8 per cent to trim its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10 per cent. Broadcom climbed 7.1 per cent and erased its drop for the week.They were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, and they benefited from hopes for continued spending by customers diving into artificial-intelligence technology.Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, said late on Thursday that it expects to spend about US$200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites”.Such immense spending, similar to what Alphabet announced a day earlier, is creating concerns of its own, though. The question is whether all those dollars will create big enough profits to make the investments worth it. With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock dropped 5.6 per cent.