Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The stock market's strong opening has expanded upon yesterday's growth as the Nasdaq Composite (+1.0%), S&P 500 (+0.6%), and DJIA (+0.3%) all post healthy early gains.

Ten S&P 500 sectors trade in positive territory, led by the information technology (+1.4%), energy (+0.8%), and consumer discretionary (+0.8%) sectors.

The technology sector is unsurprisingly benefitting from President Trump's announcement that companies committed to domestic production will be exempt from impending 100% tariffs on chip and semiconductor imports. 

The PHLX Semiconductor Index is up 2.3% in the early going, its best start in what has otherwise been a sluggish week for the index. 

Shares of NVIDIA (NVDA 182.91, +3.49, +1.95%) are trading higher, while Apple (AAPL 219.14, +5.90, +2.76%) continues to build on yesterday's rally.

Elsewhere in the sector, Intel (INTC 19.96, -0.45, -2.20%) trades lower following remarks from President Trump that the company's CEO is "highly conflicted and must resign immediately."

Q2 productivity increased 2.4% (Briefing.com consensus: 2.2%) following a downwardly revised 1.8% decline (from -1.5%) in Q1. Unit labor costs rose 1.6% (Briefing.com consensus: 1.5%) following an upwardly revised 6.9% (from 6.6%) in Q1. From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity was up 1.3%.

The key takeaway from the report is that productivity improved noticeably from the first quarter, helping to tamp down unit labor costs. The 1.8% annualized rate of productivity growth in the current business cycle (starting Q4 2019), though, is still below the long-term rate of 2.1% since the first quarter of 1947.