US STOCKS-Wall Street digests Fed minutes with tariffs in focus, Nvidia hits $4 trillion valuation?

*

Indexes up: Dow 0.37%, S&P 500 0.45%, Nasdaq 0.77%

*

Nvidia (NVDA) first company to hit $4 trillion market value

*

AES (AES) jumps on report of sale efforts

*

UnitedHealth (UNH) down on report of DOJ's Medicare billing probe

(Updates prices to late afternoon)

By Sin?ad Carew and Pranav Kashyap

July 9 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 extended gains slightly on Wednesday following the release of minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting, after Nvidia (NVDA) briefly reached a $4 trillion valuation and as investors awaited more details on President Donald Trump's trade policy.

The minutes showed narrow support for an interest rate cut later this month, with only "a couple" of Fed officials at its June 17-18 meeting saying they felt rates could fall in July. Most policymakers continued to worry about the expected inflationary pressure from Trump's import taxes.

Nvidia (NVDA) was last up 1.7% after it became the world's first company to hit a $4 trillion market value Wednesday morning, solidifying its position as one of Wall Street's most favored stocks to tap in the ongoing surge in demand for artificial intelligence technologies.

The S&P 500's other main boosts came from megacap companies including Microsoft Corp (MSFT) and Amazon.com (AMZN).

"There's definitely a megacaps bias ... to some extent it's a flight to safety but not what you would traditionally think of as a safety trade," said Kevin Gordon, senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab. "From a trade standpoint it's not like you're getting much clarity."

At 2:14 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 164.00 points, or 0.37%, to 44,404.76, the S&P 500 gained 28.01 points, or 0.45%, at 6,253.53 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 157.20 points, or 0.77%, to 20,575.90.

Nine of the 11 S&P 500's major industry sectors were advancing, with utilities and communication services leading gainers, while defensive consumer staples was the biggest decliner.

Trump on Wednesday issued letters to seven countries, calling for tariffs of 30% on Algeria, Iraq, Libya and Sri Lanka, 25% on Brunei and Moldova, and 20% on the Philippines.

The European Union has said it could reach an outline trade agreement with the U.S. in the coming days.

On Tuesday, Trump had ramped up his trade offensive with the announcement of a 50% tariff on copper and a vow to slap long-threatened levies on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

On Monday, Trump

hit 14 trading partners

with a fresh wave of tariff warnings, including Japan and South Korea.

While Wall Street indexes had fallen on trade jitters on Monday, they have steadied since then, with analysts noting that investors have become used to Trump's pattern of saber-rattling on tariffs. And with the deadline for the latest tariffs pushed to August 1, many are betting that negotiations will defuse the trade war.

"The tariff issue continues to be this sort of seesaw and because of that back-and-forth, it obviously has given investors a bit of a calm," said Philip Blancato, chief market strategist at Osaic Wealth.

Meanwhile, after last week's record closes for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq - buoyed by a surprisingly robust jobs report -investors are turning their attention to Thursday's initial jobless claims for the next pulse check on the labor market.

Among individual stocks, AES Corp (AES) jumped 18.7% after Bloomberg reported that the power provider was exploring options, including a sale.

Boeing (BA) advanced 4.1% as Susquehanna raised its price target after the planemaker reported on Tuesday that its airplane deliveries in June increased 27% on a yearly basis.

UnitedHealth Group (UNH) slipped 1.7% after the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating how the health insurer deployed doctors and nurses to gather diagnoses that increased its Medicare payments.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.97-to-1 ratio on the NYSE where there were 205 new highs and 30 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,747 stocks rose and 1,656 fell as advancers outnumbered decliners by a 1.66-to-1 ratio. The S&P 500 posted 17 new 52-week highs and six new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 64 new highs and 42 new lows. (Reporting by Sin?ad Carew, Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Maju Samuel and Richard Chang)