(Updates with preliminary closing prices)

By Sinéad Carew and Pranav Kashyap

July 9 (Reuters) - Wall Street indexes closed higher on

Wednesday after Federal Reserve meeting minutes fueled hopes

that inflation pressures from President Donald Trump's tariffs

would not derail interest rate cuts this year and the tech-heavy

Nasdaq led gains as Nvidia ( NVDA ) briefly reached a $4 trillion

valuation.

The minutes for the mid-June meeting showed that most Fed

officials said they expect rate cuts will be appropriate later

this year, with price shocks from Trump's import taxes expected

to be "temporary or modest." However, there was little support

for a rate cut at the end of July meeting.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) finished higher after it became the world's

first company to hit a $4 trillion market value on 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.

"Fed officials suggested that they believe inflation will be

higher down the road. At the same time, many or most officials

suggested that they expect lower interest rates at some point

this year. Those two things don't match," said Chris Brigati,

chief investment officer at SWBC, an investment company in San

Antonio, Texas.

"Perhaps they're starting to put a little bit more weight

into what's going on with the labor market."

Besides Nvidia ( NVDA ), other market 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."

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500

gained 36.36 points, or 0.58%, to end at 6,261.88 points,

while the Nasdaq Composite gained 189.34 points, or

0.93%, to 20,607.23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average

rose 214.23 points, or 0.48%, to 44,450.53.

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.

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.

"The market is becoming a little desensitized to the bad

news of tariffs. ... You had three months of still constructive

growth and things have not been that bad so the market's saying

maybe we can get through these tariffs," said SWBC's Brigati.

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 ) rallied after

Bloomberg reported that the power provider was exploring

options, including a sale.

Boeing ( BA ) shares advanced 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 ) shares slipped 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.