On Thursday, the New York Stock Exchange continued the trend seen since the beginning of June, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq setting new records.

In late morning trading, the Dow Jones index advanced by 0.3% to 38,940 points. The much broader S&P 500, the main benchmark for stock market managers, was also up 0.2% at 5,497.1 points, after hitting a new all-time high during the session, above 5,505.5 points.

The Nasdaq Composite was up slightly less vigorously, gaining 0.1% to 17.875.2 points, following an all-time high of 17,936.7 points earlier in the morning.

The S&P and Nasdaq had already set simultaneous session and closing records on Tuesday, prior to the 'Juneteenth' bank holiday.

The prospect of major investments in generative AI is fuelling investors' appetite for risk and directing them towards technology stocks.

Nvidia, now the world's largest capitalization, added almost 3% to its rise, while some analysts see the chipmaker touching the $4.000 billion within a year.

Accenture gained nearly 7% after reporting a solid order book for its numerous projects in generative AI on the occasion of its quarterly results.

The market's reaction was all the more positive given that the morning's indicators showed the US economy to be neither too robust nor too weak.

The unemployment benefits figures published this morning fell by 5,000 to 238,000 last week, showing that the job market remains buoyant.

In view of the healthy employment situation, investors are a little more sceptical about a Fed rate cut in September.

According to the CME Group's FedWatch barometer, investors now rate the probability of monetary easing in September at 57.9%, compared with 61.7% the previous day.

But the Philly Fed index - which measures the growth of manufacturing activity in the northeastern US - fell by three points to +1.3 June.

The Commerce Department reported a 5.5% drop in housing starts in May, while building permits for new homes fell by 3.8%.

On the bond market, the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds climbed back above 4.27% after these figures, but remains at its lowest level for almost three months.

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