US equity indexes advanced after midday on Wednesday, with technology topping sector charts ahead of the release of the Federal Open Market Committee's January meeting minutes.

The Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.3% to 22,870.3, with the S&P 500 up 0.9% to 6,902.5, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.6% higher at 49,851.4.

Meta Platforms (META) said late Tuesday that it has entered a multiyear partnership with Nvidia (NVDA) to build hyperscale data centers using millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs alongside Arm-based Grace CPUs. Shares of Nvidia jumped 2.9%, among the top performers in a category of stocks with a market capitalization of more than $200 billion, according to data compiled by Finviz.

The top 10 stocks in this category were almost entirely comprised of semiconductors and financials.

iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), with assets of about $6 billion, climbed 1.7% to $82.36, reflecting a diminishing of the AI-scare trade that recently hit software companies particularly hard.

The Federal Open Market Committee is scheduled to release the minutes from its January meeting at 2 pm ET, and investors will look for the members' disposition toward interest rate cuts in the months ahead.

In the energy market, West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures soared 3.3% to $64.28 a barrel.

"The risk of sudden escalation -- given the US buildup of military assets and Iranian threats -- is likely to sustain a geopolitical risk premium, currently estimated at US$3-5 per barrel," Saxo Bank noted, referring to the indirect talks between Washington and Iran in Geneva, Switzerland.

Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Geneva collapsed after two hours, Reuters reported, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the negotiations difficult and accused Russia of stalling the talks to end the war.

In precious metals, gold futures jumped 2.4% to $5,022.1 per troy ounce, and silver futures surged 5.7% to $77.76 per troy ounce.

Meanwhile, in economic news, new orders for US durable goods fell by 1.4% in December, following a 5.4% increase, above expectations for a 2.0% decrease in a Bloomberg-compiled survey.

US industrial production rose by 0.7% in January, compared with expectations for a 0.4% gain in a Bloomberg-compiled survey, and following a downwardly revised 0.2% advance in December, according to the Federal Reserve.

The New York Federal Reserve's services index deteriorated to minus 25.7 in February from minus 16.1 in January, compared with the minus 14.2 anticipated in a Bloomberg-compiled survey.

US Treasury yields rose, with the two-year up 2.7 basis points to 3.46% and the 10-year higher by 2.3 basis points to 4.08%.

In company news, Global Payments (GPN) stock advanced 13%, the top gainer on the S&P 500, after the company posted an increase in Q4 adjusted earnings per share and issued a 2026 EPS outlook above analysts' expectations.

The worst performer on the index, as well as the Nasdaq, is Palo Alto Networks (PANW), with shares down 6.1%, after the company cut its fiscal 2026 earnings guidance.