The New York Stock Exchange ended without a clear direction on Wednesday, as investors showed restraint before the post-closing publication of the results of semiconductor giant and the world's largest capitalization Nvidia.
The Dow Jones gained 0.32%, the Nasdaq index dropped 0.11% and the broader S&P 500 index finished in balance.
On Wednesday, the American market “waited for Nvidia's quarterly results, aware that the bar is very high for the chip manufacturer”, Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com observed to AFP.
Published after closing, the group's results largely exceeded expectations for the delayed third quarter and Nvidia says it anticipates continued sustained growth for the last three months of the accounting year.
Net profit stood at $19.3 billion, according to a company press release published Wednesday, a figure more than doubled over one year (+109%) and well above the $17.4 billion projected by analysts. according to a consensus established by FactSet.
The stock lost 2.55% around 9:40 p.m. GMT during electronic trading after Wall Street closed.
Taking advantage of the appetite for artificial intelligence (AI), Nvidia became the world's largest capitalization at the beginning of November after overtaking Apple, displaying a capitalization of approximately $3,480 billion, ahead of the Apple firm's $3,400 billion.
“Semiconductors, artificial intelligence or Nvidia, (…) these elements have been a focal point for investors for some time now”, underlined in a note Kristian Kerr of LPL Financial.
“If there is a disappointment, the fallout (on the market) could be considerable, because there has been so much interest in AI,” Mr O'Hare added.
In addition to high expectations, the company must also reassure about its new chip architecture, Blackwell, announced in March with a release planned for the end of the year.
An American media outlet, The Information, raised fears on Monday about possible overheating problems, which could delay their release to the market.
Pending Nvidia's results, part of the semiconductor sector finished in the red, including Broadcom (-1.27%), AMD (-1.28%) and Intel (-0.79%) .
Another big name in the sector, Qualcomm plunged (-6.34%), after displaying, during its investor day, its ambitions for diversification in the years to come, particularly in the PC sector.
Elsewhere on the stock market, the supermarket chain Target tumbled (-21.41%), after publishing on Wednesday a quarterly net profit down and well below analysts' expectations, while lowering its annual forecasts.
The Williams-Sonoma decorative items brand was catapulted (+27.54%) thanks to better-than-expected quarterly results. The group also revised its annual turnover upwards.
The Roku streaming channel lost 6.66%, after the digital marketing platform The Trade Desk (+3.75%) announced on Wednesday that it was launching its own streaming service called Ventura.
After an increase at the start of the session due to a new record on Wednesday for Bitcoin which came close to the symbolic threshold of 95,000 dollars per unit, cryptocurrency players Riot Platforms (0.98%) and Coinbase (-1.40%) are packed.
On the bond market, the yield on 10-year US government bonds stood at 4.41%, compared to 4.40% the day before at closing.
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