US equity markets advanced, with the technology-centric Nasdaq climbing to a fresh record high as tariff and trade headlines remained in focus and as investors parsed meeting minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June monetary policy meeting - Dow rose +218-points or +0.49% to 44,458.30, settling ~1% below its record closing high. Nvidia Corp rose +1.80% to US$162.88, pulling back from earlier highs that saw the chipmaker become the first ever company to achieve a market capitalisation of US$4 trillion. Nvidia needed to finish at or above US$163.93 to reach the $4 trillion milestone at the close. Nonetheless, the chipmaker’s closing market capitalisation of US$3.974 trillion was a record closing peak for any company. Amazon.com Inc +1.45% that its cloud division has developed hardware to cool down next-generation Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used for artificial intelligence workloads. UnitedHeatlh Group Inc fell -1.56% to be the worst performing Dow component overnight following a report from the Wall Street Journal that ex-employees and medical professionals have been interviewed by Department of Justice investigators over a probe into the insurer's Medicare billing practices.
