The S&P 500 reached its latest milestone on the heels of major gains from big tech: the 7,000-point mark.

The benchmark index briefly rose to 7,001 after trading began Wednesday, before paring back its gains to end the day mostly flat. Companies like Intel and Nvidia surged, as the tech industry has fueled the stock market since the early 2000s.

Still, JPMorgan economists say indexes like the S&P 500 have outpaced the “real economy” in that time. Gold also continued its rally as investors are flocking to the safe haven amid challenges to the Federal Reserve’s independence and a weakening dollar.

The Federal Reserve opted to keep interest rates steady at its January meeting, defying President Donald Trump’s demands. “In many ways, this meeting is a secondary event to the bigger concerns about Fed independence,” Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School, told Forbes Daily. The Trump Administration recently launched a controversial criminal investigation into Powell and has sought to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Paradoxically, such threats raise expectations for inflation, House explains, making it harder for the central bank to cut rates.

Two key firms reported earnings Wednesday, with Tesla and Meta both exceeding Wall Street’s expectations. Still, Tesla reported its first-ever decline in annual revenue, and the company lost its position as the world’s largest EV maker early this month, falling behind China’s BYD. Meta said it expects to spend more this year as it invests more in AI.

MORE: In Tesla’s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk announced the company would end production of its premium Model S and Model X cars, and that a California factory will be converted to manufacture the company’s upcoming Optimus humanoid robots. In premarket trading early Thursday,........

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