Nvidia’s earnings report delivered Wall Street a real shocker: They didn’t move the stock market much on Thursday.
The S&P 500 was moving in and out of positive territory. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 60 points, or 0.1%.
Nvidia’s results topped expectations, but stock was moving between a modest gain and a modest decline. The lack of a huge, decisive move could have more to do with the stock’s historic run north of the $4 trillion market cap mark this year than any real reaction to the results.
“For more than a week, all we heard about was the importance of NVDA’s earnings report and what it would mean for the market,” writes Bespoke Investment Group co-founder Paul Hickey. “Well, NVDA earnings came, and NVDA earnings went, and the most hyped earnings report in weeks has ended up being a non-event.”
A “nonevent” could actually be one of the better outcomes of this report. While a big push higher would have been great for the stock market, Nvidia’s results did not cast doubt on artificial intelligence spending, and the stock itself is not dragging on the S&P or Nasdaq for the moment.
That’s a pretty good deal, especially if the market continues to broaden out, tying its gains to more than just AI.
On the economic front, weekly jobless claims dropped to 229,000 last week, which was below expectations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest update on second-quarter gross domestic product growth was revised to an annual rate of 3.3%, up from the first estimate of 3%.
“Overall, this release probably doesn’t change Federal Reserve thinking too much,” writes Richard Flax, chief investment officer at Moneyfarm. “We still expect to see a [quarter-point] rate cut in September. But a stronger than expected result from domestic demand suggests that there might not be that much scope to cut rates over the next twelve months.”