The stock market continued a rally attempt, nearly staging a follow-through day on Wednesday following the Federal Reserve meeting and an upbeat Fed Chief Jerome Powell. The major indexes were narrowly mixed for the week. NVIDIA unveiled upcoming AI chips at its GTC event. China EV giant BYD Co., Ltd. rose on fast-charging news, while rivals generally fell, with Tesla Motors down for a ninth straight week. Google-parent Alphabet will buy the cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion. Micron Technology rallied on earnings.

Stock Market Mixed

A stock market rally attempt continues, but there's been no follow-through day to confirm a new uptrend yet. The Nasdaq fell solidly for the week as of Friday morning, with the S&P 500 also down. The Dow Jones and small-cap Russell 2000 were fighting for slim gains. Fed Chief Jerome Powell gave a relatively upbeat assessment of the economy. Gold and insurers remained areas of strength, but China stocks came off highs. Treasury yields fell modestly.

Fed's Powell Downplays Risks

The Fed may be flying blind with respect to tariffs and fiscal policy, but Wall Street was relieved by what it sees ahead. Updated projections showed 50 basis points in rate cuts this year, as GDP growth slows to 1.7%. The Fed raised its year-end forecast for unemployment to 4.4% and core inflation to 2.8%. Markets took comfort in Chair Jerome Powell's view that inflation caused by Trump tariffs will be "transitory" and in the slower pace at which the Fed will unload Treasurys on its balance sheet. Powell noted weaker business and consumer confidence, but said hard data looks solid. Initial jobless claims remained tame in the March 15 week. February retail sales came in on the soft side, as sales at restaurants and bars fell 1.5%, possibly held back by weather. But core sales, excluding food services, building materials, autos and gas, rose a strong 1%.

Nvidia Details AI Chip Roadmap

Nvidia (NVDA) Chief Executive Jensen Huang introduced the company's next-generation AI processor, Blackwell Ultra, and presented the product roadmap for the next three years at its GTC conference. Blackwell Ultra products are due out later this year. He also showed off new network switch products that use silicon photonics technology. Huang forecast data center capital spending doubling to $1 trillion by 2030 from 2025. He said analysts are underestimating the size of the artificial intelligence market because they aren't including enterprise AI factories and sovereign AI in their models. In addition, Huang said AI will fuel autonomous vehicles and robotics. Quantum Computing Stocks Fall Shares of quantum computing companies such as D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), IonQ (IONQ) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) fell for the week. Those companies and many others in the sector presented their business cases and outlooks at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, Calif. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said quantum technology holds great promise but he expressed skepticism that it will be "useful" in the near term. Huang said quantum devices seem more like scientific instruments than computers today.

Data Center Business Drives Micron Beat

Memory-chip maker Micron Technology (MU) beat expectations for its fiscal second quarter thanks to strong data-center business. It also guided higher than views for fiscal Q3. Micron's adjusted EPS surged 271% year over year while sales rose 38% to $8.05 billion. Revenue from high-bandwidth memory for data centers crossed the $1 billion milestone in the quarter. For the current quarter, Micron forecast adjusted EPS up 153% on sales of $8.8 billion, up 29%.

PDD Mixed, Tencent Beats

PDD Holdings Inc missed estimates for Q4 revenue as the Temu parent company continued to slow from triple-digit level at the start of 2024. The China e-commerce firm's sales increased 24% to $15.3 billion for the December quarter, compared to growth of 44%, 86% and 131% in the three prior quarters. The company has said it is seeing increased competition both for Temu internationally and Pinduoduo in China. Investors are also watching the impact of the U.S.-China trade war on the global e-commerce firm. Meanwhile, PDD's adjusted earnings increased 16% to $2.78 per U.S.-listed share, beating views. PDD stock gained 4% following the report, despite the sales miss. Elsewhere, WeChat parent Tencent (TCEHY) rode strong growth from its gaming division to a stronger-than-expected Q4. Sales climbed 11% to $23.9 billion while earnings increased solidly. But over-the-counter Tencent shares backed off 52-week highs during the week, falling slightly. The gaming and messaging giant said it would step-up investments in AI infrastructure as it competes with Alibaba (BABA), Baidu (BIDU) and others.

BYD Charges Ahead

China EV and battery giant BYD (BYDDF) touted new 1,000 kilowatt charging, which can charge up an EV in 10 minutes. The EV giant, which plans to rapidly roll out the chargers, also began preorders for the first two EVs that can take 1,000 kWh charging. Along with making driver-assist standard in EVs, BYD's tech efforts could boost sales and its brand. XPeng (XPEV) reported mixed Q4 results while Zeekr (ZK) missed. Nio (NIO) missed and gave weak guidance. All there are still unprofitable. BYD will report Q4 earnings on Monday. BYD stock charged to new highs, but later pared gains. XPeng, Zeekr and Nio fell.

Tesla Extends Losing Streak

Tesla Motors declined for a ninth straight week amid a slew of headlines. The EV giant raised the Model Y Long Range price in China, but left the more-popular base variant price unchanged, while new cheap financing signaled an effective price cut overall. California granted Tesla a permit to transport employees in company-owned vehicles before potentially later transporting members of the public, but using human drivers. Tesla recalled all 46,000 Cybertrucks. Analysts continue to slashed Q1 EPS and delivery figures, in part due to CEO Elon Musk's brand damage from his political posts and DOGE work for the Trump administration. Musk held an "all hands" meeting Thursday night streamed online to buoy confidence.

Google To Buy Cybersecurity Firm Wiz

Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL) will buy the fast-growing, privately held cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion cash. Talks broke off in 2024 about a $23 billion deal amid concerns over regulatory approval. The Wiz deal would mark Google's biggest acquisition ever. Wiz would join Google's cloud computing business. Google Cloud competes with Amazon Web Services, part of Amazon.com (AMZN) as well as Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure business and Oracle (ORCL). Wiz's products will continue to be available on AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Oracle, Google said. A Google-Wiz deal could still face significant regulatory review. Wiz competes with Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Zscaler (ZS) (IBD) and others. Wiz has been building an end-to-end cybersecurity platform. It had about $500 million in annual recurring revenue in 2024, analysts estimate.

FedEx Cut Profit Views

FedEx once again whittled down its fiscal 2025 profit expectations again as the delivery heavyweight's third-quarter earnings grew 17%, slightly below analyst expectations. Sales rose 2% to $22.2 billion, just beating. CFO John Dietrich blamed the latest guidance cut on "weakness in the U.S. industrial economy." Shares tumbled.

Stock Market News In Brief

Boeing (BA) CFO Brian West on Wednesday said the Dow Jones manufacturer is "broadly tracking" to hit Q1 expectations. West added that Boeing's Q1 EPS will include a one-time expense of $150 million. He said that Boeing was seeing less working capital drag, which could improve free cash flow by several "hundreds of millions" by quarter close. Boeing expects March deliveries to be in line with February's number of 44 aircraft. BA stock jumped 6.8% Wednesday to mark its best daily gain since 2023.

Allstate (ALL) broke out to a new high after disclosing February catastrophic losses plunged from January, which was affected by the L.A. fires. Progressive (PGR) sank on its February metrics, but held a buy point and pared weekly losses.

Ollie's Bargain Outlet (OLLI) reported a 3% EPS drop, in line with views, while revenue growth slowed to 3%, slightly missing. But shares of the closeout retailer jumped on a store opening ramp up and a $300 million buyback plan.

Gilead Sciences (GILD) tumbled Wednesday on reports the Department of Health and Human Services could cut federal funding for HIV prevention. Gilead is one of the biggest makers of HIV treatments, including pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, drugs.

Shopify (SHOP) will shift its listing to the Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange, effective March 31. Given its size, Shopify will likely join the Nasdaq 100 index, perhaps by year end.

Klarna, which has filed for an initial public offering, grabbed retailer Walmart (WMT) away from rival buy now, pay later firm Affirm (AFRM) as a customer. Competition is heating up in the BNPL market. PayPal (PYPL) recently said it plans to be more aggressive acquiring BNPL customers. With BNPL options, consumers pay off purchases in monthly installments, usually with lower interest payments than credit card companies. Affirm tumbled.

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) and fellow government contractors Gartner (IT), CACI International (CACI) and Science Applications International (SAIC) tumbled Thursday after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was canceling $580 million in contracts, including deals with Gartner and consultancy McKinsey. They also fell as tech services and consulting giant Accenture (ACN) warned that its U.S. government business could see slower growth amid DOGE-led layoffs of federal employees and contract issues.