4:05pm: Record-breaking rally
A rally in Nvidia stock spurred the Nasdaq 3% higher at Thursday’s close. The tech-laden index added 460 points to finish the trading day at 16,042 points.
The S&P 500 was up 2.1% at 5,087 points and the Dow Jones gained 1.2% at 39,068 points – both record levels.
12:00pm: Nvidia pushes ever further, bringing S&P to record highs
Nvidia Corp remained front and centre of the market’s attention as midday rolled around.
The chipmaking giant’s stock was up 15% to $776 following a third consecutive multibillion-dollar revenue beat in the fourth quarter.
Concurrently, competing fabless chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD, ETR:AMD) rallied over 11% to help bring the Nasdaq 100 index 2.4% higher to 17,904.
Equities were buoyant all around, with the broader S&P 500 index up 1.6% to a record 5,062 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) up 0.7% to 38,870.
Salesforce, Amex and Visa led the DJIA risers.
9:46am: Wall Street rockets as Nvidia trailblazes
Wall Street has rocketed on its opening, with tech-darling Nvidia doing much of the legwork, pushing 13% higher.
The Dow Jones is up over 255 points at around 38,850, while the S&P has flown 60 points higher to around 5,040.
"Nvidia is almost defying the laws of financial markets," said Peter Garnry, the head of equity strategy at Saxo.
"We have never seen anything like this before in the equity market in terms of 265% YoY revenue growth rate for a company expected to report around $100bn in revenue over the next four quarters. It should almost not be possible."
It's not just Nvidia reaping the rewards either, rival chipmakers like Arm and Advanced Micro Device are up 12% and and 7%, respectively.
Top fallers in the US on Wednesday include Etsy, down 8%, after it missed its quarterly earnings guidance and warned the start of 2024 would be slow.
8:00am: Wall Street to open higher as Nvidia targets market record
Wall Street is set to open higher after Nvidia once again beat analyst expectations during its quarterly update, with the Dow Jones positioned to open 173 points higher at around 38,750.
Nvidia surged 13% in pre-market trading and is expected to beat Meta's record session, just three weeks after the social media company set it.
Reports predict that the AI chipmaker will add around US$250 billion to its market capitalisation, marking the single-session rise in history.
It comes less than a month after the Facebook owner set the record with a US$197 billion gain.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) (Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)) analyst Joseph Moore said: “We had never seen $2 billion+ of upside to quarterly revenue guidance until Nvidia did it a few quarters ago, but it has become routine during the AI surge.
"[The] strength of AI demand continues to be remarkable.”
Nvidia generated revenues of $22.1 billion during the quarter compared to Wall Street analyst expectations of $20.3 billion.
This represented a 265% year-over-year increase and was a quarterly revenue record.