Updates to mid-afternoon trading

By Stephen Culp and Ragini Mathur

NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - Wall Street advanced on Thursday, lifted by a tech stocks rally as investors absorbed generally solid economic data and watched for developments from Beijing, where U.S. President Trump was engaged in a high-stakes meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

All three major U.S. stock indexes were higher, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on course for the latest in a series of record closing highs.

"Everybody's asking the same question: how much longer does this (rally) go on? There's a lot of people that are loving this rally, but they're also antsy at the same time," said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut. "You have to be in it to win it, not just sitting on the sidelines watching the market go to all-time highs."

President Trump attended the summit along with an entourage that includes Elon Musk and Jensen Huang, the respective Chief Executives of Tesla TSLA.O and artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia NVDA.O.

Concurrently, Nvidia's shares were up 3.6% after the U.S. cleared the sales of the company's H200 chips to Chinese firms.

The summit between Trump and Xi is intended to hash out a broad array of issues, including trade, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz. The waterway, through which Asia gets much of its crude, has been effectively shut down during the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.

"Trump needs Xi to help open up those straits, and Xi needs the oil and Trump needs a resolution to the war," Pavlik added. "So there's a lot riding on it. They're both negotiating from what I imagine each feels is a position of power."

On the economic front, retail sales were in line with expectations, but propped up by rising gasoline prices resulting from the Iran war. Gasoline was largely responsible for the biggest jump in import prices since October 2022.

A series of inflation reports this week showed the risk of spiking energy costs metastasizing to other goods and services, extinguishing hopes for near-term rate cuts from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid called inflation the most "pressing risk" to the U.S. economy, which he characterizes as "resilient" economy. While Schmid is not a voter on monetary policy this year, his remarks reflect the Fed's rate-cut-averse hawkish wing.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 329.85 points, or 0.66%, to 50,023.05, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 47.92 points, or 0.64%, to 7,492.33 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC gained 202.62 points, or 0.77%, to 26,604.97.

Among the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, tech shares .SPLRCT led the percentage gainers, while materials .SPLRCM suffered the steepest loss.

Semiconductor stocks .SOX were lifted by Nvidia, while other artificial intelligence-related firms, including Qualcomm QCOM.O, Intel INTC.O, Sandisk SNDK.O and Micron MU.O were off between 1.9% and 5.9%.

Sectors that have suffered amid continued AI fervor and the ongoing strife in the Middle East were among the session's best performers, including software & services .SPLRCIS, trasports .DJT and regional banks .KRX were among the outperformers.

Cisco CSCO.O surged 12.8% to touch an all-time high after the computer networking giant announced almost 4,000 job cuts as part of a restructuring scheme, and raised its annual revenue forecast.

U.S.-listed shares of tech infrastructure firm Nebius Group NBIS.O rose 7.7% after Northland Capital raised its target price by 15.3% to $248 per share.

China has agreed to buy 200 jets from Boeing BA.N, President Trump told Fox News. Even so, the planemaker's stock was off 3.7%.

Cerebras CBRS.O jumped nearly 90% above its offer price in the chipmaker's U.S. market debut.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.85-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 381 new highs and 81 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,830 stocks rose and 1,852 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.53-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 26 new 52-week highs and 10 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 101 new highs and 112 new lows.