U.S. indices are piling up records this Thursday and heading resolutely for a 19th week of gains: the longest bull cycle in history without a weekly correction of -2% seems unstoppable.

Wall Street, which had started the session strongly up, maintained its gains close to the optimum until the close... the suspense lasted until the last minute for the Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq-100, which could also achieve the session/close double.

The S&P500, which climbed +1.03%, brilliantly achieved the intraday (5,160) and closing (5,157) record double.

The Nasdaq Composite fell just two points short of its closing record, climbing +1.51% to 16,273... but mission accomplished for the intraday record, which peaked during the session at 16,309.

The Nasdaq was once again dragged to new heights by Nvidia, which set a new all-time closing record: +4.5% at $927.5 for a market capitalization of $2,300 billion. This is very close to Apple - stable on Thursday - which could lose its second place by the "4 Witches": Apple generates $100 billion in sales per quarter, Nvidia $20 billion... if all goes as hoped.

Intraday absolute record also for the Nasdaq-100 (at 18,338), which finished for the second time in history in contact with the 18.300 (+1.56% to 18,298) in the wake of the semiconductor sector, which was once again 'incandescent': the 'SOXX' soared by +3.5% thanks to NXP +3.5%, Micron +3.6%, Qualcomm +4.7%, Microchip +6.3%, ON.Semi +6.9%.

The latest quarterly results are coming in, with Marvell and Mongo DB plunging -12% after the close... Marvell, which 'beat the consensus', was nevertheless punished after +40% since January 1 ($3 billion share buyback plan), and MongoDB's forecasts came in below expectations. On the other hand, Docusign came as a pleasant surprise, jumping symmetrically by +15% in the after-hours.

The Dow Jones continued to underperform with +0.34% to 38,791 (a few gains made up the difference: Microsoft +1.8%, Amazon +1.9%, AMEX +2.3%, Intel +3.7%).

There were also several 'macro' figures: the US trade deficit widened to $67.4 billion in January, from $64.2 billion the previous month, US productivity was confirmed at +3.2% in Q4 2023 and jobless claims remained virtually stable last week.

On the foreign exchange market, the dollar ended down by 0.5% and the $-Index, which fell to 102.85, was at its lowest level since January 16.

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