Dow jumps over 900 points to hit all-time high as tech stocks stage furious rally

Wall Street is bouncing back Friday from losses taken earlier in the week, as technology stocks recover some of their drops and bitcoin halts its plunge, at least for now.The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 958 points, or 2%, in midday trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.5% higher.The blue chip index had hit an all-time high of 49,885 earlier.The S&P 500 rose 1.5% and was heading for just its second gain in the last eight days.Chip companies helped drive the gains, and Nvidia rallied 6.2% to trim its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10%.

Broadcom climbed 5% to eat into its drop of 6.3% for the week.They were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, and they benefited from hopes for big spending on chips by companies to drive their forays into artificial-intelligence technology.Amazon, for example, said late Thursday it expects to spend about $200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”Such heavy spending, similar to what Alphabet announced a day earlier, is creating concerns of their own, though.

The question is whether all those dollars will prove to be worth it through bigger profits in the future.With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock dropped 8.5%.Even with Friday’s rebound, the S&P 500 is still heading toward its third losing week in the last four.

Besides worries about the big spending on AI by Big Tech companies, whose stocks are the most influential on Wall Street, concerns about AI potentially stealing customers away from software companies also hurt the market through the week.Bitcoin, meanwhile, steadied itself somewhat following a weekslong plunge that had sent it more than halfway below its record set in October.It climbed back above $68,000 after briefly dropping close to $60,000 late Thursday.Prices in the metals market also calmed a bit following their own wild swings.

Gold rose 1.6...