Around 3:50 p.m., the Dow Jones fell by 0.48%, the Nasdaq advanced by 0.65% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.18%.
The New York Stock Exchange opened in disorganized order on Thursday, creating a split between technology stocks, boosted by the incredible results of semiconductor giant Nvidia, and the rest of the market.
Around 1:50 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones fell by 0.48%, the Nasdaq index advanced by 0.65% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.18%.
Wall Street remained in shock from the publication of Nvidia’s quarterly accounts (+9.28%), which, once again, clearly exceeded analysts’ expectations.
The Santa Clara (California) group was driven by the explosion of remote computing (cloud computing) and data centers, which have become more essential than ever with the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Even if its competitors are struggling, Nvidia’s chips, the famous graphics cards (GPU) remain, by far, the most popular on the market for managing the development and management of large generative AI models.
And the momentum seems likely to continue, according to the forecasts published on Wednesday, after the stock market, which are much higher than market projections.
“The market breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of these numbers,” explained Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments. “He was worried that Nvidia wouldn’t live up to expectations, but he blew them away.”
A few seconds after the opening, the company exceeded the symbolic threshold of 2.5 trillion dollars in market capitalization, almost the value of all the members of the CAC 40.
“Nvidia is the new king of Wall Street,” he stressed, “and we find a market which is driven, essentially, by the values of AI.”
Behind the green giant (the color of its logo), its competitors Broadcom (+1.39%), AMD (+2.42%) or Qualcomm (+1.62%) took the lead.
But the major listed players in the development of AI, such as Microsoft (-0.04%) or Meta (-0.30%), were stalling, having already reached high valuations.
The mood was for risk-taking in the New York market, as evidenced by the VIX index, which measures investor anxiety, which fell on Thursday to the lowest in four and a half years, i.e. before the coronavirus pandemic.
This climate worked against the representatives of the old economy, very present in the Dow Jones, whether banks, such as JPMorgan Chase (-0.64%), or industry, such as 3M (-1.65%). or Honeywell (-1.28%), or even health like Pfizer (-1.93%).
On the bond market, the yield on 10-year US government bonds was unchanged at 4.42%.
Elsewhere on the market, the ready-to-wear group Ralph Lauren (+2.58%) benefited from better-than-expected quarterly results despite forecasts considered disappointing.
Another player in the clothing sector, VF Corporation took on water (-7.75%). The holding company particularly suffered from the fall in sales of Vans shoes (-26%), attributed to an inventory adjustment at wholesalers.
The DuPont conglomerate was sought after (+1.04%) after the announcement of its upcoming split into three separate entities, all listed on the stock exchange. This is a new restructuring for the group which has changed shape several times over the last ten years.
The concert organizer Live Nation was struggling (-2.28%), while several media reported imminent action by the American Department of Justice for infringement of competition.
News Corp was gaining ground (+2.24%), helped by the partnership concluded with the generative AI juggernaut OpenAI. It provides access to the content of press titles from Rupert Murdoch’s group to feed AI models and find sources in response to questions from interface users.
