James Gruber

NVIDIA climbed nearly 2%, while memory and storage sellers Micron and SanDisk soared more than 15% each, lifted by strong demand from the rapid build-out of AI data centers.

The semiconductor index jumped, bringing its gain so far in the second quarter alone to 55%.

Amid a positive earnings season so far, there were some disappointments on Friday, though.

Cloudflare plunged 24% after the cloud services company said it would cut about 20% of its workforce and forecast second quarter revenue slightly below Wall Street estimates.

CoreWeave dropped 11% after the cloud infrastructure technology company raised the lower end of its annual capital expenditure forecast.

Meantime, online travel platform Expedia declined 9% after it flagged that the conflict in the Middle East was hurting demand.

U.S.

government bond yields fell after the jobs report that topped expectations.

The U.S.

10-year Treasury yield was four points lower to 4.36%, while the U.S.

two-year Treasury yield was down three points to 3.89%.

Gil, everyone is paying attention to inflation rates right now, given its impact on interest rates, and they monitor inflation through the traditional consumer price index.

Lesser known figures from the Bureau of Statistics, known as the Selected Living Cost Indexes, measure inflation differently by including things like mortgage interest payments, and they also break down cost of living increases for different age groups.

Anyhow, last week's release of the selected living cost indexes showed the biggest quarterly rise in living costs for age pensioners and other retiree groups since 2007, up 2.5%, even bigger than 2022 when inflation skyrocketed.

It was primarily down to large rises in electricity and pharmaceutical costs.

Other age groups weren't hit as bad, but the figures go to show that cost of living increases remain a huge issue out there.

And I'm James Gruber.

Have a great day.

Stocks fall on Iran peace deal doubts.

Local shares set to drop too.