A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan
Tuesday’s geopolitical angst faded fast in world markets as positioning ahead of today’s results from AI-giant Nvidia saw Big Tech lead a Wall Street rebound – one that futures look to have sustained overnight.
After months of basically ignoring the Ukraine conflict, world markets suddenly got the jitters yesterday after Ukraine made use of its new freedom to use U.S.-supplied missiles on Russian territory and Moscow responded with nuclear threats.
But with so much of the conflict now in flux as Donald Trump’s new administration prepares to take the helm in Washington in January, investors were wary of over-interpreting daily events there for now or chasing ‘safety trades’ too far.
Reinforcing the point on Wednesday, the Kremlin seems keen to position itself for some sort of Trump-brokered settlement – even though it rules out making any territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
The upshot in markets over the past 24 hours has been to return the focus to the two other obsessions of the week – the Nvidia earnings update after the bell today and speculation about who gets the nod to take over the Treasury next year.
The rebound in U.S. stocks on Tuesday was aided by a 3% advance in WalMart to a record closing high after the retailer raised its annual sales and profit forecasts for the third consecutive time – with some aggravating inflation signals also embedded in some of its pricing readouts.
But earnings from the $3.6 trillion-valued Nvidia will likely steal the show later and its stock surged almost 5% on Tuesday ahead of the release.
Options traders are primed for a nearly $300-billion swing in its market value following the chipmaker’s results on Wednesday. Nvidia options implied an 8.5% swing in either direction – in line with previous percentage results-day moves but now amplified by sheer scale of market cap in what’s now the world’s most highly-valued company.
Encouraging the renewed tech fizz, Super Micro Computer jumped more than 30% on Tuesday after the artificial intelligence server maker named BDO USA as its auditor and said it has submitted a plan to the Nasdaq to avoid delisting.
All of which saw megacap tech outperform yesterday, even though the wider market was less enthused and the equal-weighted S&P500 actually ended in the red.
Combining the tech excitement and a post-election crypto surge on Trump-related de-regulation hopes, Bitcoin resumed its climb and topped $94,000 for the first time overnight. The latest spur was a report that Trump’s social media company was in talks to buy crypto trading firm Bakkt.
