Wall Street ends sharply up, fueled by Nvidia and Amazon

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to give a speech on Friday that investors will dissect for indications of how aggressively the Fed may move to raise interest rates as it battles decades-high inflation.

$NVIDIA(NVDA.US)$ jumped 4% after the graphics chipmaker gave a weaker-than-expected quarterly forecast that many investors viewed as signaling the worst of a sales downturn may be over. That drove a rally in the Philadelphia semiconductor index . $PHLX Semiconductor Index(.SOX.US)$.

$Apple(AAPL.US)$ and $Microsoft(MSFT.US)$ rose more than 1%, while $Amazon(AMZN.US)$ and $Alphabet-A(GOOGL.US)$ added more than 2%, with all four companies making substantial contributions to the Nasdaq's increase.

All 11 S&P 500 sector indexes rose, led by materials .SPLRCM, up 2.26%, followed by a 2.06% gain in communication services.

Traders see a slightly greater likelihood of a third 75-basis-point interest hike from the Fed at its policy meeting next month, compared with a 50-basis-point increase.

Fed officials on Thursday were noncommittal about the size of the interest rate increase they plan to approve at their Sept. 20-21 meeting, but they continued hammering the point that rates will rise and stay high until such high rates of inflation have been squeezed from the economy.

$Citigroup(C.US)$ climbed 2.1% after saying it plans to close its consumer and commercial banking businesses in Russia starting this quarter.

Additional chipmakers rallying on Thursday $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD.US)$ , up 4.8%, and $Broadcom(AVGO.US)$ , which gained 3.6%. $SPDR S&P 500 ETF(SPY.US)$ $Invesco QQQ Trust(QQQ.US)$