Stocks rose higher on Thursday as market participants assessed Nvidia's earnings report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed over 450 points, while the S&P 500 Index added more than 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite traded 0.03% higher.
Here's how the market settled on Thursday:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +0.53% or +31.60 points to 5,948.71
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): +1.06% or +461.88 points to 43,870.35
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +0.03% or +6.28 points to 18,972.42
Nvidia Earnings:
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) posted another strong quarterly earnings report late Wednesday, driven by "staggering" demand for its AI chips. However, the chipmaker issued soft near-term revenue outlook, calling for fourth-quarter revenue of $37.5 billion.
CFO Colette Kress warned in a letter released with the earnings report that supply constraints for its Blackwell graphics processing units (GPU) are likely to continue into 2025.
"Both Hopper and Blackwell systems have certain supply constraints, and the demand for Blackwell is expected to exceed supply for several quarters in fiscal 2026," Kress said.
Still, CEO Jensen Huang told investors during the company's earnings call on Wednesday that "Blackwell production is in full stream," and "we will deliver this quarter more Blackwells than we has previously estimated," even with the supply constraints.
"The supply chain team is doing an incredible job working with our supply partners to increase Blackwell, and we're going to continue to work hard to increase Blackwell through next year," he added. "It is the case that demand exceeds our supply -- Blackwell demand is very strong."
In Other Earnings News:
Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) shares jumped over 30% on Thursday after the data analytics software maker reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. For its full year, Snowflake expects product revenue to grow by 29% to $3.43 billion, including an adjusted operating margin of 5%.
"We've been creating centralized, more efficient teams for some areas and removing redundant management layers, which enables us to make decisions faster," CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told analysts during the company's earnings call.
Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) also reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results late Wednesday and announced a 2-for-1 stock split. The cybersecurity company also lifted its full-year outlook for fiscal 2025, calling for revenue between $9.12 billion to $9.17 billion, from $9.10 billion to $9.15 billion previously, with adjusted earnings per share in the range of $6.26 to $6.39, up from its previous range of $6.18 to $6.31. Its shareholders of record as of Dec. 12 will also receive an additional shares for each one they own after market close on Dec. 13, with the new shares and halved price taking effect market open on Dec. 16.
In Economic News:
Initial Unemployment Claims showed a steady labor market ahead of the holiday season, the Labor Department reported on Thursday, coming in at a less-than-expected 213,000 for the week ended Nov. 16 -- also below the previous week's revised print of 219,000. Continuing claims, which are tracked a week behind, rose to 1.908 million from 1.872 million the week prior, coming in ahead of expectations.
In the News:
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) shares came under pressure for a second day on Thursday after the U.S. Department of Justice called for Google to divest its Chrome browser following an August ruling that the tech giant holds a monopoly in the search market.
"To remedy these harms, the [Initial Proposed Final Judgement] requires Google to divest Chrome, which will permanently stop Google's control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet," the filing stated.
For Friday:
Market participants will turn their attention towards November's S&P flash U.S. services and manufacturing purchasing managers indexes alongside the month's final consumer sentiment reading on Friday.