Market Rally Driven by Tech Gains Following Flat PPI Data
As Investor's Business Daily reported, the major indexes closed higher — but the Nasdaq 100 did all the heavy lifting while the Dow barely twitched, and the entire rally pivoted on a single boring…
Sylvia Parrish, Chief Business Columnist·updated August 13, 2026
You know that particular hush on the floor when the tape tells a story nobody wants to admit out loud? That was Thursday. As Investor's Business Daily reported, the major indexes closed higher — but the Nasdaq 100 did all the heavy lifting while the Dow barely twitched, and the entire rally pivoted on a single boring number out of Washington.
The inflation trade, repackaged
July wholesale prices came in flat month-over-month, with year-over-year producer inflation at 4.7%, according to live coverage from The Sunday Guardian. That's the headline. The subhead is what it did to the rest of the complex: Treasury yields slipped, oil retreated, and suddenly every long-duration growth name on the board had a green candle. Funny how one PPI print can turn "sticky inflation" into "the Fed is done" inside an hour. The market priced in relief, then spent the rest of the session defending that bet with the kind of conviction usually reserved for a hedge fund's year-end letter.
Tech did the lifting, again
The Dow closed at 53,847.14, up a piddling 76.87 points, or 0.14%. The S&P 500 added 0.54% to 7,790.19. The Nasdaq Composite tacked on 0.82% to 26,806.08, and the Nasdaq 100 climbed 0.86%, brushing up against the 30,000 line like a tourist testing a velvet rope. Intel led the Dow, up 4.59% to $105.58; Netflix added 3.63%, Micron 2.52%, AMD 2.31%. IBD separately flagged Lenovo punching past an entry point — a small detail, but a useful one if you watch the PC refresh cycle. More than 430 S&P 500 names have now reported this quarter, and the bid under equities remains, in plain English, an AI-and-soft-data story with a rate-cut option stapled to the back.
What I'm watching into Friday
The Nasdaq 100 at 30,000 isn't a level — it's a referendum. Either buyers defend it into the next session and we get a clean breakout, or it stalls and we revisit the question of whether that flat July PPI was the high-water mark for dovish hopes. Don't confuse a green close with conviction. The Dow's barely-positive print tells you exactly how narrow the leadership really is — and how much of today's "broad rally" was, once again, five stocks in a trench coat.