NEW YORK (AP) — Nvidia is helping to lead a split U.S. stock market on Wednesday, ahead of the chip company’s highly anticipated profit report coming after trading ends for the day.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5 per cent and erased its losses from earlier in the week, when stocks swung sharply as investors tried to separate potential losers from winners in the artificial-intelligence boom.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 69 points, or 0.1 per cent, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1 per cent higher.
Nvidia was one of the strongest forces lifting the market, even though more stocks fell in the S&P 500 than rose, and it climbed 1.7 per cent. Analysts are expecting it to deliver another blowout earnings report, and they’re forecasting Nvidia will say its profit surged nearly 70 per cent from a year earlier to US$37.52 billion. That’s would mean it made more than US$400 million per day during the three months through Jan. 25.
Nvidia’s profit reports have become a bellwether for the market, not only because it’s become Wall Street’s biggest stock but also because of how influential AI has broadly become over the market’s moves. In past years, the AI frenzy helped stocks run to record after record amid hopes that it would revolutionize the economy and make it more productive.
More recently, though, concerns have climbed about whether companies like Alphabet and Amazon are spending so much on chips from Nvidia and other equipment that they’ll never be able to make back the investments through future gains in productivity. If that leads to a pullback in spending, it would hit Nvidia directly.
Investors have also begun focusing on companies and industries that could get undercut by AI-powered competitors. That has led to sudden and swift sell-offs for stocks seen as potentially at threat, and the worries have rolled through industries as seemingly disparate as software, trucking logistics and legal services.
That’s lying on top of other worries already weighing on the market, including new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump to replace ones struck down by the Supreme Court.
“While those concerns are real, we believe investors would be wise to balance them out with offsetting trends that may be underappreciated in the current wall of worry headline cycle,” according to Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer for Wealth & Investment Management at Wells Fargo.
Among them is the strong growth in profit that U.S. companies have been reporting so far for the end of 2025. That has helped strengthen some corners of the U.S. stock market that had been overshadowed by AI mania and Big Tech, including stocks of smaller companies.
Cava Group, the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain, jumped 22 per cent after delivering better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue for a fiscal year also topped US$1 billion for the first time, up 22.5 per cent from the year earlier.
Axon Enterprise leaped 20.4 per cent after the seller of Tasers and body cameras with AI voice-activated assistants likewise reported bigger profit and revenue than analysts expected.
They helped offset a 14 per cent drop for First Solar, which reported a weaker profit than analysts expected.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.2 per cent, and South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.9 per cent for two of the bigger moves.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury inched up to 4.05 per cent from 4.04 per cent late Tuesday.
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Stan Choe, The Associated Press. AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
