NEW YORK/LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - World equity markets rose to a fresh new peak on Thursday while the U.S. dollar gained against major peers buoyed by the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut, while the pound dipped slightly after the Bank of England kept rates unchanged.
On Wall Street, all three indexes were trading higher with the Nasdaq gaining more than 1%. Intel (INTC.O), jumped more than 25% after Nvidia (NVDA.O), said it would invest $5 billion in the struggling U.S. chipmaker. Nvidia's shares were up 2.6% on the session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), rose 0.45% to 46,227.50, the S&P 500 (.SPX), rose 0.71% to 6,647.52 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), rose 1.07% to 22,499.15.
The pan-European STOXX 600 (.STOXX), index rose 0.81%. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe (.MIWD00000PUS), rose 0.40% to 980.25, topping the previous session's record.
"Today's market action is pretty interesting," Sandy Villere, portfolio manager at Villere & Co in New Orleans.
"The Nasdaq is up more than the Russell 2000. I would've thought the Russell 2000 would start to act really well in the face of what looks like two more cuts in 2025. Small caps tend to do quite well and in falling interest rates, but I think with the investment of Nvidia into Intel kinda has the NASDAQ maybe up just from that fundamental standpoint."
The Fed cut rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday and its closely watched "dot plot" had pointed to two more rate cuts over its remaining two meetings this year, but only one additional reduction in 2026.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 5.1 basis points to 4.128%.
The BoE voted 7-2 to keep rates unchanged at 4% while slowing the annual pace at which the BoE sells gilts it purchased between 2009 and 2011 to 70 billion pounds from the current 100 billion pounds, in line with economist forecasts.
Against the Swiss franc , the dollar strengthened 0.43% to 0.792 and was up 0.71% to 148 against the Japanese yen .
The euro down 0.3% at $1.1777 while the sterling weakened 0.47% to $1.3561.
Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Philippa Fletcher
