Stocks sunk deeper on Thursday as Nvidia's earnings-fueled rally failed to boost the broader market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 600 points, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite lost about 0.7% and 0.3%, respectively.
Here's how the market settled on Thursday:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): -0.74% or -39.17 points to 5,267.84
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): -1.53% or -605.78 points to 39,065.26
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): -0.39% or -65.51 points to 16,736.03
In Focus:
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares rose above $1,000 each on Thursday after the semiconductor darling reported stronger-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results and announced a 10-for-1 stock split. Nvidia has become a bellwether for the emerging artificial intelligence industry in recent months, with its Q1 results showing the AI chip demand is high as the company expects sales of $28 million for its current quarter.
Nvidia said its data center segment rose 427% year-over-year to $22.6 billion in revenue during the quarter, with CFO Colette Kress pointing towards shipments of the company's Hopper graphics processors (which include its H100 GPU) as the major catalyst for the growth.
"A big highlight this quarter was Meta's (NASDAQ: META) announcement of Lama 3, their latest large language model which used 24,000 H100 GPUs," Kress said during the company's earnings call with analysts.
Separately, its 10-for-1 stock split will begin trading at market open on June 10, according to Nvidia, making ownership "more accessible to employees and investors."
On the Economic Front:
Sales of New U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in April, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, falling by 4.7% over March to a seasonally adjusted total of 634,000. Moreover, the median sale price was $433,500, down by 6,000 from March's print but up 4% from a year ago; the average sales price in April was $505,700.
Initial Unemployment Filings also declined for the week ended May 18, the Labor Department reported Thursday, totaling 215,000 or 8,000 below the previous week's upwardly revised print. Continuing claims, which trail a week behind, ticked higher to 1.794 million.
In the News:
News Corp (NASDAQ: NWSA) and Open AI announced a "multi-year global partnership" after market on Wednesday, allowing the ChatGPT parent to access current and archived articles from the media conglomerate's many outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, The New York Post, and others. News Corp will also "share journalistic expertise to help ensure the highest journalism standards are present across OpenAI's offering," under the deal, the companies said in a statement.
"We believe a historic agreement will set new standards for veracity, for virtue and for value in the digital age," said News Corp CEO Robert Thomson in a release.
Live Nation (NYSE: LYV) shares declined Thursday after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit, joined by 30 states, against the Ticketmaster parent on alleged antitrust violations. The lawsuit followed an investigation by the DOJ into whether the company maintains a monopoly in the ticket sales industry.
"We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators," said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. "The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster."
Live Nation said the DOJ's monopoly allegations are "absurd," in a statement, with VP for Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Dan Wall claiming the federal government "ignores everything that is actually responsible for higher ticket prices."