Wall Street’s still betting green, weirdly enough

The market’s doing that thing again

The S&P 500 keeps acting like it didn’t get the memo about inflation. On Wednesday, the index notched another record high while traders piled back into semiconductor and AI-linked names, basically saying, “Yes, price pressures are annoying. No, we’re not leaving the party yet.”

And the mood heading into Thursday’s open? Still surprisingly upbeat. A Polymarket contract put the odds of the S&P 500 opening higher at 77%, which is a fancy way of saying traders were leaning into the same old 2026 script: buy the AI chips, ignore the noise, and hope the macro bogeyman stays in the hallway.

Why the tape is acting so smug

The culprit for the nerves was April’s producer price index, which showed wholesale inflation up 1.4% month over month — the biggest jump since March 2022 and way hotter than economists expected. That’s not exactly a “nothing to see here” number, especially with energy prices still getting dragged around by Iran-war headlines.

But instead of selling everything in sight, investors mostly did what they’ve been doing all year:

• They leaned into Nvidia, Micron, and the whole semiconductor trade.
• They treated AI demand like a shield against macro chaos.
• They mostly ignored the fact that roughly two-thirds of the S&P 500 actually finished lower.

The AI trade is still carrying the backpack

Nvidia gained more than 2%, Micron jumped over 4%, and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF rose 2%. That’s the market’s current thesis in one sentence: if the world is messy, at least the chipmakers might still grow into their valuations.

There was also some geopolitical tea stirred into the mix. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly joined President Trump’s China visit meetings with Xi Jinping, feeding hopes that AI chip access to China won’t get boxed out completely. Translation: investors love any hint that the giant AI money machine might keep spinning.

Cisco stole the after-hours spotlight

Then came Cisco, which surged 19% after hours after posting earnings and guidance above Wall Street expectations. So while the broad market is still trying to balance inflation anxiety with AI optimism, one old-school network gear name just reminded everyone that boring infrastructure can still throw a pretty good after-party.

Big picture: the market is still betting that AI growth can outrun macro pain. But if inflation keeps running hot, this “buy semis, shrug at everything else” strategy could start looking a little too cute.