Tech Weekly: S&P 500 Closes Near Record Ahead of Fed Interest Rate Decision

This week's tech sector performance

Major US equity indexes opened the month lower on Monday (December 1), with Big Tech and crypto‑linked stocks under pressure after Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda spoke to business leaders in Nagoya.

During his speech, Ueda said the bank will weigh the “pros and cons” of a rate hike at its December 18 to 19 meeting, fueling yen carry trade fears. The uncertainty echoed August 2024 volatility, but stayed contained.

By Tuesday (December 2), large indexes had stabilized and moved higher, helped by ongoing enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure names after MongoDB (NASDAQ:MDB) reported its third quarter revenue after hours on Monday, beating estimates and igniting a rally for cloud and software companies.

Major indexes closed higher, and markets pushed further up on Wednesday (December 3) on weak ADP jobs data, boosting the odds of a December interest rate cut from the US Federal Reserve to 85 percent.

However, AI demand doubts surfaced amid reported high-bandwidth memory shortages.

On Thursday (December 4), the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) ticked up slightly premarket, then flattened, while the Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) dipped amid yield pressure.

Tech stocks weakened as investors took profits before rotating into small caps.

The week culminated with the S&P 500 closing near record levels on Friday (December 5), while the Nasdaq also notched gains after a week of volatility and leading up to next week's Fed meeting.

3 tech stocks moving markets this week

1. MongoDB (NASDAQ:MDB)

MongoDB, a database company, surged after hours on Monday after its Q3 earnings beat estimates.

The company reported US$628 million in revenue, far past expectations of US$594 million. The firm's earnings per share came in at US$1.32, blowing through expectations of US$0.79. Revenue for Atlas, MongoDB’s fully managed cloud database service, grew by 30 percent from last year’s report, driven by AI workloads.

The company raised its 2026 fiscal year guidance, sparking a rally that extended into Tuesday’s trading day, lifting cloud peers such as Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) and Datadog, as well as enterprise software companies like Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW).

2. Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL)

Marvell Technology announced plans to acqure optical chip startup Celestial AI for US$3.25 billion in a mix of cash and stock on Wednesday, sending its shares up by over 10 percent.

The company plans to harness Celestial’s Photonic Fabric to accelerate photonics tech for AI data centers.

“The acquisition of Celestial AI is a transformative step in Marvell’s evolution and expands our leadership in AI connectivity, as scale-up becomes the next frontier in AI infrastructure,” said Matt Murphy, chair and CEO of Marvell. “This builds on our technology leadership, broadens our addressable market in scale-up connectivity, and accelerates our roadmap to deliver the industry’s most complete connectivity platform for AI and cloud customers.”

After the announcement, Roth Capital Markets analyst Suji Desilv raised his price target for Marvell to US$135 from US$150, reiterating a “buy” rating.

3. Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)

Shares of Salesforce jumped over 8 percent postmarket on Wednesday after the company reported a strong performance in Q3 that surpassed analysts' expectations. Revenue rose 9 percent year-on-year to US$10.3 billion, meeting estimates, while earnings per share of US$3.25 surpassed expectations of US$2.41.

The company’s AI agent platform, Agentforce, exploded with nearly US$1.4 billion in combined Agentforce/Data 360 bookings growth, up 114 percent from the previous year. Further fueling positive investor sentiment, the company raised its 2026 fiscal year revenue guidance to between US$41.45 billion and US$41.55 billion, reaffirming its revenue target of over US$60 billion by its 2030 fiscal year.

Top tech news of the week

• Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) held its annual cloud conference, AWS re:Invent, on Tuesday, debuting Trainium3 AI chips, which are reported to be four times faster and up to 40 percent more energy efficient. AWS also showcased its UltraServers, which boast 144 chips per rack to power AI factories. During the event, where the company teased an upcoming Trainium4 with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) NVLink Fusion compatibility, Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon, called custom chips a multibillion-dollar business. Ahead of the event, AWS and Google Cloud launched joint multi-cloud networking to link AI workloads seamlessly, a move they say will cut outage risks amid capacity wars.

• In a joint press release on Monday, NVIDIA said it had purchased 4.8 million shares of Synopsys (NASDAQ:SNPS), worth roughly US$2 billion, as part of a multi-year partnership to integrate its CUDA-accelerated computing, agentic AI and Omniverse digital twins into Synopsys’ chip design software. According to the announcement, the collaboration will speed up chip design and simulation, as well as verification for semis, aerospace and autos, replacing slow CPU workflows. Joint sales and marketing efforts are slated to begin in 2026.

• A false report from the Information claiming Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) had slashed AI sales quotas hit markets Monday, briefly pressuring shares down 1 to 2 percent amid broader Bank of Japan yen carry trade fears. Microsoft quickly denied the report in a statement provided to Seeking Alpha, but the sharp reaction shows how sensitive traders are to any AI demand signal. Shares of Microsoft had recovered by Tuesday as markets stabilized.

Tech ETF performance

Tech exchange-traded funds (ETFs) track baskets of major tech stocks, meaning their performance helps investors gauge the overall performance of the niches they cover.

This week, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) advanced by 5.59 percent, while the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXQ) saw a weekly gain of 5.36 percent.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) increased by 4.38 percent.

Tech news to watch next week

Investors will be watching for signals ahead of the Fed's rate decision on December 10. As of Friday afternoon, the market had priced in rate cut odds of over 90 percent.

Growth stocks could sell off hard next week if a cut is delayed.

The Bank of Japan's interest rate decision on December 19 is another key event. A rate hike could trigger an unwind of the yen carry trade, potentially causing another dip in tech stocks.