Major indices are holding onto gains with the Nasdaq leading helped by resilient showing from chip-related names and aggressive dip-buying in software stocks.

Some relief across yields is also contributing to the broad advance. Yields moved lower in response to commentary from Fed Governor Waller.

Communication Services (XLC) and Consumer Discretionary (XLY) are leading this afternoon amid strength across their mega-cap components. On the other hand, Materials (XLB) is taking a breather following yesterday’s gains.

Outages across AI platforms

Multiple AI companies are experiencing outages, according to Downdetector as well as company status pages. OpenAI confirmed this and Anthropic said they are investigating and working on a fix.

Some models are already recovering:

• ANTHROPIC SAYS SEVERAL MODELS HAVE RECOVERED TO BASELINE
• OPENAI SAYS HAS APPLIED THE MITIGATION, MONITORING RECOVERY

NVDA Newest Acquisition

NVIDIA (NVDA) agreed to acquire Hugging Face, one of the largest open-source AI developer platforms for $12.9 billion. The deals continue to get bigger, although this is the second biggest purchase the company has made:

• Hugging Face Year 2026 for $12.9 billion
• Groq Year 2025 for $20 billion
• Mellanox Year 2019 for $7 billion

This gives the company a much bigger role in how open AI is distributed and deployed.

Economic Data

ISM Services PMI came in at 55.4 in August from 54.1 in July, surpassing consensus of 54.3. New orders, exports and business activity were strong while employment remained in contraction. Notably, prices paid continued to move higher.