A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets from Mike Dolan
There’s not too much to worry about at world’s most valuable company – or the artificial intelligence theme – but just conceding that triple-digit growth can’t last forever has been enough to stall Nvidia’s share price and dampen global tech stocks.
The $3.6 trillion chip giant’s revenue forecast on Wednesday disappointed Wall Street, with its stock down more than 3% premarket – with peers Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Qualcomm off about 1% in sympathy and European chipmakers down as well.
Although it beat most metrics and consensus estimates yet again, Nvidia forecast its slowest revenue growth in seven quarters and flagged supply chain constraints through next year. Its executives warned investors the company’s margins would sink several percentage points to the low-70% range until production kinks are ironed out.
But don’t shed too many tears. The AI bellwether’s latest earnings report was by most standards still extraordinary – sales in its main data center segment more than doubled and the company’s forecast revenue of $37.5 billion for fourth quarter was above average estimates of $37.09 billion.
And in many respects, the price reaction is modest. After another 20% share surge over the past two months, markets feel most of the ongoing boom is already in the price for now.
More worrying on Wednesday was U.S. retailer Target’s big miss on its profit and holiday-quarter sales forecast – which sent its stock plummeting more than 20% and stood in contrast to the previous day’s beat from the world’s no. 1 retailer Walmart.
The politics of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration still dominated thinking in the background – with no sign yet of his pick for Treasury Secretary – and geopolitical worries rumbled abroad.
One of the few post-election trades to keep on moving was Bitcoin – and the dominant crypto asset zoomed close to a record $98,000 overnight, up more than 40% over the past month.
Overall, the broader market was more subdued, with stock futures marginally in the red on Thursday and most European and Asian indexes lower too.
U.S. Treasury yields slipped back despite a poorly received 20-year bond auction on Wednesday – but the dollar remained firm.
Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said on Thursday the central bank would “seriously” take into account foreign exchange rate moves in compiling its economic and price forecasts and noted there would be more information to digest before next month’s policy meeting.
