4:10pm: Sell-off pauses
Markets bounced back at the close Wednesday, with the Nasdaq leading the way, up 0.6% to 22,564, while the S&P 500 gained 0.4% to 6,642. The Dow Jones inched up 0.1% to 46,139, and the Russell 2000 added 0.1% to 2,352, marking a modest recovery after a four-day slide led by tech shares.
Investors had one eye on Nvidia (NVDA), which is set to report its highly anticipated third-quarter earnings after the bell. This will be the company’s first earnings announcement since its market capitalization briefly topped $5 trillion last month. Shares of the chipmaker rose as much as 3% Wednesday ahead of the report, closing the session up around 2.8%, though they remain roughly 10% below their recent record highs amid broader market jitters over AI valuations.
All eyes will shift to Thursday’s jobs report, the first major economic data since the government shutdown delayed several releases. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also canceled the October jobs report and pushed back November’s update to Dec. 16, making tomorrow’s numbers especially important for investors gauging the health of the labor market.
3:50pm: Proactive news headlines
- M2i Global and Volato signed a non-binding MOU with Nimy Resources to work toward a supply agreement for gallium from Nimy’s Mons project in Western Australia.
- NEXE Innovations completed a second shipment of more than 300,000 compostable coffee pods to Bridgehead Coffee as part of a 1.2 million-pod purchase order for Costco rollout.
- Ethernity Networks received a new patent for its longest-prefix-matching routing method, designed to support large routing tables with minimal clock cycles and reduce reliance on external TCAM components.
- American Rare Earths updated the Mineral Resource Estimate for its Halleck Creek project, upgrading about 63.9 million tonnes to Indicated status and securing drilling permits ahead of 2026 development work.
3:20pm: Alphabet hits new high
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares are trading at an all-time high, hitting an intraday high of about $304 on Wednesday, following the release of the company’s latest large language model, Gemini 3.
The new AI model, which succeeds the previous Gemini version, is designed to deliver improved responses to complex queries, with better contextual understanding and reduced need for prompting.
Investors welcomed the release, sending the company’s shares up 3.5% to $295 on early Wednesday afternoon, gaining 54% in the year to date.
2:25pm: Market movers
- Alphabet shares hit a record high after launching its latest large language model, Gemini 3, which offers improved handling of complex queries.
- MP Materials shares surged after it announced a joint venture with the U.S. Defense Department and Saudi Arabia’s Maaden to build a rare earth refinery in Saudi Arabia.
- Wix shares plunged nearly 15% as strong quarterly results were overshadowed by investor concerns over rising AI-related costs, increased marketing spend and potential dilution from a recent $1 billion convertible notes offering.
- Unity shares rose almost 6% after unveiling a partnership with Epic Games that will let developers publish Unity-built games within Fortnite’s discovery ecosystem.
- Adobe said it will acquire Semrush for $1.9 billion in cash, offering $12 per share—a roughly 75% premium to Semrush’s last close.
- La-Z-Boy shares jumped 20% after the company posted fiscal second-quarter results that beat expectations, with revenue of $522.5 million.
- Lowe’s reported slightly better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and raised its full-year outlook, showing ongoing resilience in home improvement demand.
1:20pm: Cautious trading
Stocks edged into the green in early Wednesday afternoon trading ahead of the bellwether Nvidia earnings report, expected after 4pm ET.
Just after 1pm, the Dow had returned to positive territory but was trading essentially flat. The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were ahead by 0.2%, along with the small cap Russell index.
12:15pm: Palo Alto also due
Nvidia isn't the only company reporting after the bell tonight.
Palo Alto Networks Inc is set to release its fiscal first-quarter 2026 results, with investors closely watching revenue and subscription growth amid an evolving cybersecurity market.
Jefferies analysts expressed confidence that the cybersecurity solutions provider can meet its revenue targets. In a note last week, they raised their target price to $250 per share from $235, while cautioning that they do not expect a significant increase to Palo Alto’s already conservative fiscal 2026 guidance.
UBS analysts offered a cautiously optimistic outlook, noting that early checks in October and November have been mostly positive despite sentiment cooling slightly in the past month. “Coming off a very strong F4Q, we are cognizant of investor concerns around pull forward and contract duration, however checks from early Oct and early Nov have sounded mostly positive,” UBS wrote.
11:25am: Investors eye Nvidia cautiously
Investors could be in for a bumpy ride when Nvidia reports earnings, says Ipek Ozkardeskaya, Senior Analyst at Swissquote.
Ozkardeskaya points to growing worries over the scale of AI spending and the circular nature of deals—like the recent $15 billion joint investment by Nvidia and Microsoft into Anthropic, which will also buy Nvidia-powered computing from Microsoft.
“Today, all [investors] worry about is rising debt. And debt smells worse when borrowing costs mount,” Ozkardeskaya said, noting rising credit concerns for companies like CoreWeave, Tesla and Oracle.
Ozkardeskaya added that sentiment has swung quickly from “AI is everything” to skepticism, leaving some investors questioning whether the huge bets on AI will ever pay off.
10:40am: Trade deficit narrows
The US trade deficit in goods and services narrowed to $59.6 billion in August from $78.2 billion in July, close to forecasts, according to government data delayed by the recent shutdown.
Exports fell slightly in goods but rose in services, while imports dropped sharply in goods, including nonmonetary gold, and edged up in services.
Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, said the smaller deficit “will be a tailwind for third quarter real GDP, since it means that more US expenditures were directed toward domestically-produced goods and services rather than foreign ones.”
Adams added that the decline in imports partly reflected earlier summer purchasing ahead of threatened tariff increases.
On a year-over-year basis, exports rose 1.9% in August while imports fell 1.9%. For the year to date, exports are up 5.1% and imports are up 9.2%.
Comerica expects the data to contribute to evidence of brisk, though uneven, economic growth in 2025, even as the labor market shows signs of softening.
9.55am: Nasdaq leads as Wall St begins to bounce back
Wall Street has opened broadly higher, led by tech stocks, reversing a four-day decline.
The Nasdaq Composite is up 0.8%, powered by strength in chip stocks and other tech, with Constellation Energy up 3.8%, Applovin rising 3.5%, Alphabet climbing 3.3% and Nvidia up 1.8%.
The S&P 500 has gained 0.48% and the Dow Jones is just above flat, while the Russell 2000 index of small-caps is also in positive territory, up 0.3%.
7.50am: Rebound expected for US stocks
US futures were flashing green ahead of Wednesday's opening bell, indicating a potential end to recent selling ahead of Nvidia earnings in the evening.
Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures were up around 0.3%, while those for the Dow Jones were up less than 0.1%.
This follows a fourth successive day of falls on Tuesday, with the Nasdaq falling 1.2%, the Dow dropping 1.1% and the S&P sliding 0.8% as the Mag 7 group of tech magacaps plunged 1.75%.
Bucking the trend, the Russell 2000 rose 0.3% and the Equal Weight S&P 500, which gives all stocks from large to small the same influence on the index's movement, ended flat.
"When the Equal Weight holds on a risk-off day, that’s often the first signal investors are reallocating, not retreating," said market analyst Kenny Polari at Slatestone Wealth.
"It means investors are quietly stepping in below the surface – buying the other 493 names: the value names, the beaten-up names, the under-owned names."
Nvidia, which slid 2.8% yesterday and is down around 14% so far in November, releases its earnings after tonight’s close.
"It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that these quarterly results, along with Nvidia’s forward guidance, could set the tone for the whole stock market as we go into year-end," said analyst David Morrison at Trade Nation.
He said investors appear more unsure over the AI outlook than at any time since the tech-led rally began in October 2022, with concerns that it may take a long time for the big tech hyperscalers to see a return on their investments, if at all.
Worries are being fuelled by the circular nature of the AI investing environment, with AI start-up Anthropic announcing a $30 billion investment in Microsoft, with Microsoft and Nvidia pledging investment back into Anthropic.
Ahead of Nvidia earnings, there are minutes due from the last Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting, when the Fed announced a 25-basis-point rate cut, as expected, though some committee members wanted a deeper cut.