The U.S. stock market is rising on Wednesday, for now at least, ahead of a huge couple of tests for Wall Street.
Earnings report for Wall Street’s most influential stock to come after closing bell
The Associated Press
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The U.S. stock market is rising on Wednesday, for now at least, ahead of a huge couple of tests for Wall Street.
The S&P 500 added 0.4 per cent after trimming an earlier jump of 1.1 per cent.
It’s coming off a four-day losing streak, its longest in nearly three months, and has been shaking recently because of worries that stock prices have shot too high and that the U.S. Federal Reserve may not deliver as many revitalizing cuts to interest rates as expected.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 98 points, or 0.2 per cent, as of 11 a.m. ET, after an earlier gain evaporated. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.8 per cent.
Constellation Energy helped lead the market and rallied 6.1 per cent after the U.S. Department of Energy said it’s lending $1 billion US to help restart Constellation’s nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island.
Lowe’s rose 4.8 per cent after the home-improvement retailer reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.
They helped offset a 1.5 per cent drop for Target, which reported a stronger profit, but also weaker revenue, for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer hinted that challenges may continue through the critical holiday shopping season.
The market’s focus, though, remained squarely on Nvidia.
Nvidia reports its earnings for the last quarter after the closing bell. The California company climbed 2.6 per cent to recover some of its loss for the month so far, which topped 10 per cent on Tuesday.
The company, which at one point briefly topped $5 trillion US in value, has become the largest stock on Wall Street. That means its movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index’s direction some days.
One way Nvidia can quiet criticism that its stock shot too high, which led to this month’s struggles, is to keep delivering bigger profits, because stock prices tend to track profits over the long term.
Nvidia has also become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around artificial intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips to ramp up their AI efforts.
Those AI-linked stocks, along with Nvidia, have been a major reason the U.S. stock market has been setting records, with the latest for the S&P 500 coming late last month.
Worries have been rising, though, that all the investment may not produce as much profit and productivity for the overall economy, as earlier hoped.
Critics have been suggesting AI’s surge is similar to the bubble that enveloped dot-com stocks, which ultimately imploded in 2000 and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half.
