As a very unpredictable trading week comes to a conclusion, Nasdaq futures are indicating that key indices will make small gains. Recent trading for the tech-heavy Nasdaq futures was almost unchanged, while those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the benchmark S&P 500 were up 0.3%. Yesterday, investors absorbed the news that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had resigned, ending the rapid and unexpected decline of the leading executive of the AI age. As a result, stocks finished down. Even though the S&P 500 and Nasdaq lost ground yesterday, they are still up around 3% for the week, while the Dow is up about 2%. It will be over a month before the Nasdaq and S&P 500 have posted weekly gains, but that could change soon.
After falling more than 4% yesterday, shares of Nvidia were up 2% in premarket trade as of late. After rumours surfaced last weekend that Huang had an affair with a lady who was allegedly a Chinese spy, the chipmaker’s stock took a nosedive. Yesterday, the resignation came hours after news broke of another affair involving one of Huang’s direct reports; the situation had already escalated when Huang admitted to having an extramarital affair, prompting an investigation by Nvidia’s board of directors. In the morning, other chip stocks are all over the place. Intel, Micron, and Marvell Technology all gained around 1% before the opening bell, while Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices saw their shares fall more than 1%. After the maker of chipmaking equipment, Applied Materials, reported quarterly earnings that were higher than expected, its stock price went up a little.
Cisco stock fell despite the networking hardware giant reporting solid quarterly earnings and providing a positive outlook in response to increasing demand for AI-related products. Premarket trade today saw a 3% decline in the stock, which had climbed in Thursday’s after-hours trading following the news release. Rising tech mega-caps include Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms, all of which have gained 1% so far today. as reaching a new all-time high during yesterday’s session, Apple shares were up a little, while Microsoft stock fell 1% as the tech giant announced progress in fixing a huge outage that hit its products yesterday. Microsoft has stated that the downtime was not caused by a breach; yet, cybersecurity stocks are rising before Friday’s opening bell.
At least 2% was contributed by Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet. Among other things, WTI oil prices fell a little to $88.60/bbl, and gold futures were flat at $3,890/oz, after hitting a 13-month low yesterday. The cryptocurrency has lost about 20% of its value in the past month, and its recent decline continued as it was trading around $69,100. An increase to 5.14% was noted in the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which has an impact on interest rates on numerous loans. The yield has jumped this week, from 4.85% a week ago, on fears that the Fed would hike rates again next month to rein in inflation, which is still significantly higher than their target.
